New Supercomputer 'Doudna' to Boost AI and Scientific Research at Berkeley Lab

US supercomputer named after Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna to power AI and scientific research

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- A new supercomputer named after a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will help power artificial intelligence technology and scientific discoveries from a perch in the hills above the University of California, Berkeley, federal officials said Thursday. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is scheduled to announce the project Thursday alongside executives from computer maker Dell Technologies and chipmaker Nvidia. The new computing system at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will be called Doudna after Berkeley professor and biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won a Nobel in 2020 for her work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR. It's due to switch on next year. "One of the key use cases will be genomics research," said Dion Harris, a product executive in Nvidia's AI and high-performance computing division, in an interview. "It was basically just a nod to her contributions to the field." Dell is contracted with the energy department to build the computer, the latest to be housed at Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Previous computers there have been named after other Nobel winners: Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist, and Gerty Cori, a biochemist. It's not clear yet how the computer will rank on the TOP500 listing of the world's fastest supercomputers. The current top-ranked computer is El Capitan, located about an hour's drive away at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. That's followed by other supercomputers at U.S. national labs in Tennessee and Illinois.

New Doudna supercomputer at Berkeley lab to power AI research

A new supercomputer meant to power artificial intelligence will soon be built for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in partnership with the Department of Energy, Dell Technologies and Nvidia. "We're going to take a giant step up in several areas in high performance computing for scientific computing. But also, artificial intelligence as well as quantum classical computing," said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Huang was joined by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright who made the announcement last week at the Berkeley Lab. "It's going to lead to tremendous advancement in science, and it's also going to play a role in national defense," said Wright. "And that is what makes it so critical that the United States lead in artificial intelligence." The new computer will be called Doudna, named after UC Berkeley professor Jennifer Doudna, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2020 for her work in gene editing technology CRISPR. "I can't wait to see what Doudna is going to calculate," she said. "For me, it really signifies the coming together of computing and biology. This is the future. This is how the next breakthroughs are going to be made." The Doudna computer will be built by next year and will go online and become available to scientists in 2027. Currently, the Berkeley Lab is home to the Perlmutter supercomputer, which is the 19th fastest computer in the world, and part of the National Energy Research Supercomputing Center, known as NERSC, which connects 11,000 scientists worldwide. "So, NERSC is available for anyone who is researching a scientific problem that is related to the Department of Energy's mission," said Jonathan Carter, Associate Lab Director for Computing Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Those missions include creating nuclear fusion simulations, biological research, climate projections, and even mapping the universe. "So, imagine you have a really souped-up laptop or a gaming PC, and imagine you could put 10,000 of them together tightly, so that any one program that you are running could execute on all those 10,000 CPUs at the same time," explained Carter. Once the Doudna supercomputer is built, it is expected to be at least 10 times faster than the Perlmutter computer. Currently, the world's fastest computer is El Capitan, which is housed also in the Bay Area at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

US supercomputer named after Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna to power AI and scientific research

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- A new supercomputer named after a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will help power artificial intelligence technology and scientific discoveries from a perch in the hills above the University of California, Berkeley, federal officials said Thursday. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is scheduled to announce the project Thursday alongside executives from computer maker Dell Technologies and chipmaker Nvidia. The new computing system at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will be called Doudna after Berkeley professor and biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won a Nobel in 2020 for her work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR. It's due to switch on next year. "One of the key use cases will be genomics research," said Dion Harris, a product executive in Nvidia's AI and high-performance computing division, in an interview. "It was basically just a nod to her contributions to the field." Dell is contracted with the energy department to build the computer, the latest to be housed at Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Previous computers there have been named after other Nobel winners: Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist, and Gerty Cori, a biochemist. It's not clear yet how the computer will rank on the TOP500 listing of the world's fastest supercomputers. The current top-ranked computer is El Capitan, located about an hour's drive away at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. That's followed by other supercomputers at U.S. national labs in Tennessee and Illinois.

US supercomputer named after Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna to power AI and scientific research

BERKELEY, Calif. -- A new supercomputer named after a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will help power artificial intelligence technology and scientific discoveries from a perch in the hills above the University of California, Berkeley, federal officials said Thursday. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is scheduled to announce the project Thursday alongside executives from computer maker Dell Technologies and chipmaker Nvidia. The new computing system at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will be called Doudna after Berkeley professor and biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won a Nobel in 2020 for her work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR. It's due to switch on next year. "One of the key use cases will be genomics research," said Dion Harris, a product executive in Nvidia's AI and high-performance computing division, in an interview. "It was basically just a nod to her contributions to the field." Dell is contracted with the energy department to build the computer, the latest to be housed at Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Previous computers there have been named after other Nobel winners: Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist, and Gerty Cori, a biochemist. It's not clear yet how the computer will rank on the TOP500 listing of the world's fastest supercomputers. The current top-ranked computer is El Capitan, located about an hour's drive away at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. That's followed by other supercomputers at U.S. national labs in Tennessee and Illinois.

US Supercomputer Named After Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna to Power AI and Scientific Research

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- A new supercomputer named after a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will help power artificial intelligence technology and scientific discoveries from a perch in the hills above the University of California, Berkeley, federal officials said Thursday. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is scheduled to announce the project Thursday alongside executives from computer maker Dell Technologies and chipmaker Nvidia. The new computing system at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will be called Doudna after Berkeley professor and biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won a Nobel in 2020 for her work on the gene-editing technology CRISPR. It's due to switch on next year. "One of the key use cases will be genomics research," said Dion Harris, a product executive in Nvidia's AI and high-performance computing division, in an interview. "It was basically just a nod to her contributions to the field." Dell is contracted with the energy department to build the computer, the latest to be housed at Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Previous computers there have been named after other Nobel winners: Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist, and Gerty Cori, a biochemist. It's not clear yet how the computer will rank on the TOP500 listing of the world's fastest supercomputers. The current top-ranked computer is El Capitan, located about an hour's drive away at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. That's followed by other supercomputers at U.S. national labs in Tennessee and Illinois. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.