Supercomputer for Nobel Prize-Winning Research

Doudna Supercomputer: A Time Machine for American Science

Imagine compressing years of scientific revelation into mere days. That’s the promise of Doudna, a groundbreaking supercomputer unveiled at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. This isn’t just an upgrade; it’s a national investment in America’s scientific future.

A Supercomputer Named for a Scientific Pioneer

“This area is the foundation of scientific discovery for our country. It is also the foundation for economic and technology leadership,” said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang,highlighting the strategic importance of HPC.

Jennifer Doudna, Nobel laureate and namesake of the supercomputer, expressed her surprise and delight. “I think we’re standing at a really interesting moment in biology,” she noted, emphasizing the power of interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle global issues.

Designed for Breakthroughs: Beyond Traditional Silos

Unlike conventional systems, doudna seamlessly merges simulation, data, and AI into a single, powerful platform. This integration is key to accelerating scientific workflows.

“The Doudna supercomputer is designed to accelerate a broad set of scientific workflows,” explained NERSC Director Sudip Dosanjh. “Doudna will be connected to DOE experimental and observational facilities through the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), allowing scientists to stream data seamlessly into the system from all parts of the country and to analyze it in near real time.”

This means over 11,000 researchers will have access to almost instantaneous responsiveness, empowering them to explore bigger questions and find answers faster than ever before.

“We’re not just building a faster computer,” said Nick Wright, advanced technologies group lead and Doudna chief architect at NERSC.”We’re building a system that helps researchers think bigger and discover sooner.”

what Breakthroughs Can We Expect?

• Fusion energy: Breakthroughs in simulation that unlocks clean fusion energy.
• Materials science: AI models that design new classes of superconducting materials.
• Drug discovery acceleration: Ultrarapid workflow that helps biologists fold proteins fast enough to outpace a pandemic.
• Astronomy: real-time processing of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at Kitt Peak to help scientists map the universe.

Doudna is projected to outperform its predecessor, Perlmutter, by more than 10x in scientific output, while only using 2-3x the power. This efficiency translates to a 3-5x increase in performance per watt, thanks to innovations in chip design and system-level efficiencies.

Quick fact: Doudna’s increased efficiency means more science with less energy consumption, a win for both research and the environment.

AI-Powered Discovery at Scale: Transforming Scientific Fields

Doudna will fuel AI-driven breakthroughs across high-impact scientific fields nationwide. Here are a few highlights:

• AI for protein design: David Baker, a 2024 Nobel laureate, used NERSC systems to support his work using AI to predict novel protein structures, addressing challenges across scientific disciplines.
• AI for fundamental physics: Researchers like Benjamin Nachman are using AI to “unfold” detector distortions in particle physics data and analyze proton data from electron-proton colliders.
• AI for materials science: A collaboration including Berkeley Lab and Meta created “open Molecules 2025,” a massive dataset for using AI to accurately model complex molecular chemical reactions. Researchers involved also use NERSC for their AI models.

Expert Tip: The “Open Molecules 2025” dataset is a game-changer, allowing AI models to learn and predict chemical reactions with unprecedented accuracy.

Real-Time science, Real-World Impact: A Connected Ecosystem

doudna isn’t a standalone system; it’s an integral part of scientific workflows. DOE’s ESnet will stream data from telescopes, detectors, and genome sequencers directly into the machine with low-latency, high-throughput NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking.

This critical data flow is prioritized by intelligent quality-of-service mechanisms, ensuring it stays fast and uninterrupted, from input to insight.

This will make the system incredibly responsive. At the DIII-D national fusion ignition facility, for example, data will stream control-room events directly into Doudna for rapid-response plasma modeling, so scientists can make adjustments in real time.

“We used to think of the supercomputer as a passive participant in the corner,” Wright said. “Now it’s part of the entire workflow, connected to experiments, telescopes, detectors.”

The platform for What’s Next: Quantum and HPC Workflows

Doudna supports traditional HPC, cutting-edge AI, real-time streaming, and even quantum workflows. This versatility is crucial for future scientific advancements.

This includes support for scalable quantum algorithm development and the codesign of future integrated quantum-HPC systems, using platforms like NVIDIA CUDA-Q.

All of these workflows will run on the next-generation NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform,which will blend high-performance CPUs with coherent GPUs,meaning all processors can access and share data directly to support the most demanding scientific workloads.

To scale out, the system will use NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand with 9x increased in-Network Computing performance so that the most challenging workloads can access even more compute and memory beyond the limits of an NVLink domain.

Researchers are already porting full pipelines using frameworks like PyTorch, the NVIDIA holoscan software development kit, TensorFlow, NVIDIA cuDNN and NVIDIA CUDA-Q, all optimized for the system’s Rubin GPUs and NVIDIA nvlink architecture.

Over 20 research teams are already porting full workflows to Doudna through the NERSC Science Acceleration Program, tackling everything from climate models to particle physics. This isn’t just about raw compute, it’s about discovery, integrated from idea to insight.

Did You Know? The NERSC Science Acceleration Program is designed to ensure that researchers can hit the ground running when Doudna is deployed.

Designed for Urgency: Accelerating the Pace of Discovery

Last year, AI-assisted science earned two Nobel Prizes. From climate research to pandemic response, the next breakthroughs won’t wait for better infrastructure.

With deployment slated for 2026, Doudna is positioned to lead a new era of accelerated science.DOE facilities across the country, from Fermilab to the Joint Genome institute, will rely on its capabilities to turn today’s questions into tomorrow’s breakthroughs.

“this isn’t a system for one field,” Wright said. “It’s for discovery – across chemistry, physics and fields we haven’t imagined yet.”

as Huang put it, Doudna is “a time machine for science.” it compresses years of discovery into days and gives the world’s toughest problems the power they’ve been waiting for.

This post has been updated with comments from Thursday’s event at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

What scientific breakthrough are you most excited to see accelerated by Doudna? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Doudna Supercomputer: Revolutionizing Scientific Discovery with AI – An Expert’s Viewpoint

The Doudna supercomputer is making waves as a groundbreaking tool for scientific advancement. Named after Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna, this supercomputer promises too accelerate discoveries across various fields. To delve deeper into the implications of this powerful machine, we spoke with Dr. Aris thorne, a leading computational scientist, about the Doudna supercomputer’s capabilities and its potential impact on the future of research.

Time.news: Dr. Thorne, thank you for joining us. The Doudna supercomputer is being described as a “time machine for science.” What makes it so revolutionary?

Dr. Thorne: The “time machine” analogy is quite apt. Traditionally, scientific progress can be a slow, iterative process. The Doudna supercomputer,however,substantially accelerates this process. Its ability to seamlessly integrate simulation, data analysis, and AI into a single platform is truly transformative. We’re talking about a potential ten-fold increase in scientific output compared to its predecessor, perlmutter, with greater energy efficiency. The Doudna supercomputer being built by Dell and NVIDIA will be built using cutting-edge technology using Dell’s direct liquid-cooled server technology and the NVIDIA Vera-Rubin CPU-GPU platform [3].

Time.news: the article highlights several key areas were Doudna is expected to drive breakthroughs, including fusion energy, materials science, and drug discovery. Which of these do you find most promising, and why?

Dr. Thorne: All of these areas hold immense potential, but the acceleration of drug discovery is particularly compelling. The ability to rapidly model protein folding, as mentioned in the article, could be a game-changer in our response to future pandemics. Imagine having the computing power to design and test potential treatments in real-time, effectively outpacing the spread of a disease.

Time.news: The integration of AI seems to be a critical component of Doudna’s capabilities. How will AI transform scientific workflows?

Dr. Thorne: AI is moving from a support role to a central function within scientific research. Datasets like “open Molecules 2025,” allow AI models to understand and estimate chemical reactions at a level once thought impossible.

Doudna’s ability to handle vast amounts of data and run complex AI algorithms will empower researchers to identify patterns, make predictions, and design experiments with unprecedented speed and precision. This will lead to more efficient use of resources and faster paths to groundbreaking discoveries.

Time.news: The article mentions that Doudna will be connected to DOE experimental facilities via ESnet, enabling near real-time data analysis. Why is this connectivity so important?

Dr. Thorne: This real-time connectivity is crucial because it transforms the supercomputer from a passive data processor to an active participant in the scientific process. It makes the system incredibly responsive, ensuring that data from telescopes, detectors, and genome sequencers can be analyzed with minimal delay. The improved response time will allow researchers to change experiments as they go,making them responsive to anomalies and interesting data that presents itself.

Time.news: For researchers who are eager to leverage the power of Doudna, what advice would you offer to prepare themselves and their projects?

Dr. Thorne: The NERSC Science Acceleration Program is a great resource for researchers looking to get involved. I recommend familiarizing themselves with AI frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow,and also NVIDIA’s software advancement kits like Holoscan and cuDNN,which are optimized for Doudna’s Rubin GPUs.As the article says, over 20 research teams are already porting full workflows to Doudna thru the NERSC Science Acceleration Program, tackling everything from climate models to particle physics.

Time.news: The article also highlights Doudna’s support for quantum computing workflows. How significant is this for the future of scientific research?

Dr. thorne: The integration of quantum computing capabilities is a forward-thinking move. Quantum computing has the potential to solve certain types of problems that are intractable for even the most powerful classical supercomputers. By supporting scalable quantum algorithm development and co-design of quantum-HPC systems, Doudna is positioning itself at the forefront of the next revolution in computation. This support includes platforms like NVIDIA CUDA-Q, which blends high-performance CPUs with coherent GPUs.

Time.news: Dr. Thorne, what scientific breakthrough are you most excited to see accelerated by Doudna?

Dr. Thorne: Personally, I’m excited about the potential breakthroughs in materials science. The ability to design new classes of superconducting materials with tailored properties could revolutionize energy transmission, electronics, and a wide range of other technologies. The Doudna supercomputer is not just advancing existing fields; it’s also paving the way for discoveries in areas we haven’t even conceived of yet.

Time.news: Dr. thorne, thank you for sharing your insights with us. It’s clear that the Doudna supercomputer represents a major leap forward for American science.