The Department of Energy (DOE) on Monday announced two new AMD-accelerated artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee as part of a public-private partnership with AMD and HPE.
One of the supercomputers, known as the Lux AI cluster, will be powered by AMD Instinct™ MI355X GPUs, AMD EPYC™ CPUs, and AMD Pensando™ advanced networking. It will be deployed in early 2026 to expand DOE’s near-term AI capacity.
The other supercomputer, known as Discovery, will be part of the traditional procurement model. Discovery, an HPE system powered by AMD processors and accelerators, will arrive in 2028. DOE said its performance will far exceed Frontier – the world’s second largest supercomputer, which is also located at ORNL.
“Winning the AI race requires new and creative partnerships that will bring together the brightest minds and industries American technology and science has to offer,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in an Oct. 27 press release. “That’s why the Trump administration is announcing the first example of a new commonsense approach to computing partnerships with Lux.”
“We are also announcing, as part of a competitive procurement process, Discovery,” Wright added. “Working with AMD and HPE, we’re bringing new capacity online faster than ever before, turning shared innovation into national strength, and proving that America leads when private-public partners build together.”
DOE said the public-private partnership model will accelerate the time it takes to build a supercomputer from years to months. The model also allows for shared computing power and infrastructure for mutual benefit, according to the department.
With more than $1 billion in public-private investment, DOE, in partnership with AMD and HPE, will deliver new AI capacity in record time with Lux and Discovery.
“The Discovery system will drive scientific innovation faster and farther than ever before,” ORNL Laboratory Director Stephen Streiffer said. “Oak Ridge’s leadership in supercomputing has transformed how researchers solve problems. With Discovery and Lux, we’re accelerating the pace of Gold Standard Science at a scale that secures America’s leadership in an increasingly competitive world.”
The announcement came the same week NVIDIA announced it will build seven new supercomputers powered by artificial intelligence for the DOE. Those supercomputers will be housed at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.