AMD and the U.S. Department of Energy have announced a $1 billion partnership to develop two new supercomputers, Lux and Discovery, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The project involves collaboration with Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with both systems powered by AMD chips.
Lux is scheduled to become operational in early 2026, while Discovery will follow in 2029. The new supercomputers build on the technology from the Frontier supercomputer, also located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Frontier held the title of the world’s fastest supercomputer until El Capitan launched last year at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. AMD contributed to the development of both Frontier and El Capitan, continuing its history of partnerships with the U.S. government on such projects.
A press release describes Lux as the nation’s first dedicated AI Factory for science, energy, and national security. It states: “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. Lux is designed to accelerate AI‑driven science through its advanced architecture, optimized for data‑intensive and model‑centric workloads.”
Discovery features a “Bandwidth Everywhere” architecture that enhances performance and energy efficiency compared to Frontier, providing greater computing output at a similar cost. The press release explains that Discovery will support research in multiple fields: “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.”
