BERKLEY, Calif. (AP) — A new supercomputer, named in honor of a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, will enhance artificial intelligence capabilities and facilitate scientific breakthroughs from its location on the hill above the University of California, Berkeley, as announced on Thursday.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright unveiled the project alongside executives from Dell Technologies, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
The computing system at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is called Doudna, named after Professor Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in 2020 for her groundbreaking work on CRISPR gene editing technology. The system is expected to be operational next year.
“A primary application will be genomics research,” stated Dion Harris, product executive in Nvidia’s AI and high-performance computing division, in an interview. “It serves as a tribute to her contributions to the field.”
Dell has partnered with the Energy Department to develop the computers, which will be housed at the latest facility of Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research and Science Computing Center. Previous computers were named after other Nobel laureates, including astrophysicist Saul Permutter and biochemist Gerti Kori.
It is yet to be determined how the new computer will rank on the Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The current top-ranked machine is Elpitan, located approximately an hour’s drive from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, followed by other supercomputers at the US National Laboratory in Tennessee and Illinois.
Source: apnews.com