DOE Picks Dell, Nvidia for Doudna Supercomputer

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Dell Technologies to build its next flagship supercomputer, Doudna, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, marking a move away from prior systems built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and powered by AMD or Intel chips. Doudna, named after CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, will utilize Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin platform, featuring Arm-based CPUs and AI-optimized GPUs to support both scientific simulations and AI workloads. The supercomputer is expected to provide over ten times the performance of its predecessor, Perlmutter, while also being significantly more power efficient. Doudna will serve over 11,000 researchers across fields like genomics, energy, and physics, and will be integrated with DOE’s data networks for real-time analysis from experimental facilities across the U.S. This project highlights the DOE's shift toward commercial AI technologies and underscores Dell’s growing influence in high-performance computing. The system is scheduled to go live in 2026.