AMD and the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $1 billion partnership to develop two supercomputers, Lux and Discovery, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The initiative, involving collaboration with Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, aims to advance AI-driven scientific research using AMD-powered systems.
The supercomputers draw from the architecture of the Frontier supercomputer, located at the same laboratory. Frontier held the title of the world’s fastest supercomputer until El Capitan became operational last year at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. AMD contributed to the development of both Frontier and El Capitan through prior partnerships with the U.S. government. This new project extends those efforts by integrating AMD chips into the designs of Lux and Discovery.
Lux will enter service in early 2026, positioning it as an early deployment in the partnership’s timeline. A press release from the announcement characterizes Lux in specific terms: “Lux at ORNL is the nation’s first dedicated AI Factory for science, energy, and national security—purpose-built to train, fine-tune, and deploy AI foundation models that will accelerate discovery and engineering innovation.” The system incorporates an advanced architecture tailored for data-intensive and model-centric workloads. This optimization enables Lux to handle the computational demands of AI applications in scientific contexts.
Discovery follows with an operational date in 2029. Its design introduces a “Bandwidth Everywhere” approach that enhances performance and energy efficiency compared to Frontier. This configuration achieves greater computing output while maintaining costs at a level similar to the earlier system. The press release details the intended applications: “Discovery will drive breakthroughs in energy, biology, advanced materials, national security, and manufacturing innovation. It will help design next-generation reactors, batteries, catalysts, semiconductors, and critical materials.” These capabilities address key challenges in developing advanced technologies across multiple sectors.
The partnership underscores ongoing investments in high-performance computing infrastructure. Oak Ridge National Laboratory serves as the host site, leveraging its established role in supercomputing projects. Collaborators Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise provide additional expertise in system integration and hardware deployment. The combined resources support the U.S. Department of Energy’s objectives in computational science.
