HPE and AMD today announced they have been selected to build two systems for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a successor to the Frontier exascale-class HPC system, along with an AI supercomputing cluster. Press reports estimate the value of the two systems at $1 billion.
Both machines will be powered by AMD and built by HPE. The new exascale system Discovery will be led by HPE and the AMD-led Lux AI system will leverage Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as part of the Lux AI Cluster.
Discovery, scheduled for 2028 delivery, will be based on the new HPE Cray Supercomputing GX5000 platform unveiled today that utilizes a unified AI and high performance computing architecture for site-wide operations. It will be supported by a new DAOS-based HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems K3000.
As did the Frontier system, Discovery joins HPE and AMD technologies. It will utilize AMD EPYC CPUs, codenamed “Venice,” and AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs — that AMD said is a new MI400 Series accelerator engineered for sovereign AI and scientific computing.
HPE said Discovery will provide capabilities for AI, HPC and quantum computing and is expected to “increase select application productivity tenfold1,” the company said, and will be used for research in areas such as precision medicine, cancer research, nuclear energy and aerospace.
As for the “Lux” AI cluster, AMD said it is the nation’s first dedicated AI Factory for science, energy, and national security. It will be based on the direct liquid-cooled HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 and utilize AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Pensando networking. It will be designed to give multi-tenant, cloud-like access to a sovereign AI factory resourced for training and inference.
The company said its HPE Cray Supercomputing GX5000 platform will deliver:
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Greater density compared to Frontier2 using 25 percent less data center space per rack.
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The next generation HPE Slingshot interconnect for high-bandwidth and low-latency.
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The HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems K3000, giving Discovery 300 percent4 more input/output operations per second (IOPS) per storage rack compared to Frontier, according to the company. HPE said it’s the first factory-built storage system with embedded Distributed Asynchronous Object Storage (DAOS) open source software, providing an all-flash storage system that complements the Lustre file system-based HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000.
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Next-generation AMD EPYC processors, codenamed “Venice,” with AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs for modeling, simulation and AI projects. Discovery also will utilize HPE liquid cooling.
The Lux AI cluster, to be deployed at ORNL in early 2026, will target such research problems as fusion, fission, materials, quantum, advanced manufacturing, and the grid.
“National Labs are perfectly suited to support this unique public private partnership because of our ability to assemble and steward curated data for national priorities that have an inherently federal interest; because of our deep technical expertise in the development and application of AI for science and technology at scale; and because of our demonstrated ability to deploy hardware and software at scale for these missions,” said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer.
“When we built Frontier for Oak Ridge National Laboratory and ushered in exascale, we achieved the pinnacle in supercomputing history and a triumph for the U.S.,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO at HPE. “We are proud to build on that leadership innovation and strong public-private partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, ORNL and AMD, to build Discovery and Lux, accelerating the next era of scientific discovery and AI innovation.”
“We are excited for Discovery and Lux to expand the science that researchers are able to do at Oak Ridge,” said Bronson Messer, Director of Science for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. “Discovery will set the stage for a new level of converged HPC, AI and quantum computing capabilities, providing additional insight in connection with other systems, while Lux greatly expands researcher access to dedicated AI resources. As a result, we expect both systems will contribute to a paradigm shift in our productivity, reaching unparalleled gains in various, critical areas of scientific research and leadership.”
