Dell NERSC 10 Supercomputer With NVIDIA Vera Rubin & DOE
Our Nobel Prize-Winning Supercomputer Accelerates Science
Dell Technologies will build NERSC 10, the next flagship supercomputer of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Centre (NERSC), under a new DOE contract. DOE user site Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory houses NERSC. Chris Wright, Secretary of Energy, made the announcement at Berkeley Lab.
The DOE Office of Science user facility Nation Energy Research Scientific Computer Centre (NERSC) houses the 10th-generation computer system NERSC 10. HPC facilities at NERSC enable physics, climate, energy, biology, and materials science research.
Overview of NERSC 10
In 2024, NERSC 10 will replace Perlmutter, its flagship supercomputer.
The implementation of NERSC 10 is expected in 2026 or later.
Developed for DOE Office of Science's growing data and computational demands until 2030.
NERSC 10 returns to LBNL in California.
Main features
Main goals of NERSC 10 Extreme Performance:
Near-exascale or exascale computer power.
Support for increasingly complex workloads.
Balanced Architecture:
High memory bandwidth and capacity.
I/O for rapid storage.
Complex interconnects for low-latency communication.
Integration of HPC and AI:
We support AI and ML workloads in addition to simulations.
built for hybrid workflows.
Energy Efficiency:
Boosting FLOP power efficiency.
Green technology like liquid cooling may be investigated.
User-centred design:
Maintaining the NERSC user experience and software stack.
A focus on usability and productivity for many scientists.
Purchase and Development
DOE normally issues an RFP years before system delivery.
Community Engagement: NERSC solicits scientific user community comments throughout system design to ensure practical research needs are met.
Strategic Importance
Supports hundreds of research projects and over 9,000 users throughout DOE mission areas.
Leadership Role: Unlike experimental exascale systems, NERSC systems are easy to use by many scientists.
The 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry winner for developing CRISPR, Berkeley Lab biologist Jennifer Doudna, will name the new system “Doudna” in 2026. Secretary Wright was surprised and pleased by Doudna's nomination, praising his biological results and the potential for computational powers to speed illness and tumour cures.
The Dell Technologies Doudna supercomputer will run on NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin platform. Large-scale HPC workloads including high-energy physics, molecular dynamics, and AI training and inference are its focus. Simulation, data, and AI on one platform stabilise cutting-edge science workflows and expedite findings.
The system “represents DOE’s commitment to advancing American leadership in science, AI, and high-performance computing,” Secretary Wright said. He called Doudna a “powerhouse for rapid innovation” that will revolutionise quantum computing and supply cheap, abundant energy. Wright called AI “the Manhattan Project of the time,” emphasising that Doudna will assist American scientists compete globally in AI.
Doudna supercomputer would speed up numerous scientific operations, said NERSC Director Sudip Dosanjh. NERSC is collaborating with NVIDIA and Dell to prepare its 11,000 users for the system's improved workflow. Doudna will be connected to DOE observational and experimental facilities via the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), allowing scientists to evaluate and stream data in real time. Because of this integration, the supercomputer is no longer a passive workflow player.
Doudna may boost innovation in several areas. Doudna can accelerate the finding of plentiful, usable energy because NERSC finances fusion research. Its strong GPUs will let DOE-funded researchers swiftly integrate large-scale AI into their workflows, speeding up basic physics, biomolecular modelling, and advanced materials design research. The system will support modern quantum simulation tools including NVIDIA's CUDA-Q platform for co-designing next integrated quantum-HPC systems and scalable quantum algorithms.
The Vera-Rubin CPU-GPU platform and Dell's latest ORv3 direct liquid-cooled server technologies are used, according to NVIDIA. It will use Dell Integrated Rack Scalable Systems and PowerEdge servers with NVIDIA accelerators, NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking, and high-performance data management and storage.
Doudna is expected to exceed NERSC's flagship supercomputer, Perlmutter, by over ten times in scientific output. Two to three times the power of Perlmutter is expected, boosting performance by three to five times per watt. The goal is to substantially reduce the time needed for major scientific breakthroughs.
We’re not just developing a quicker computer', said Nick Wright, NERSC’s Doudna principal architect and advanced technologies group lead. We're creating a framework to help researchers think broadly and discover faster. He added that the system is designed to quickly address global concerns and encourage study in physics, chemistry, and other unimagined fields.
