Massive AI supercomputing systems being built in Illinois, Tennessee

Audio By Carbonatix

(The Center Square) – While the state of Texas and private investors are advancing artificial intelligence developments in partnership with Texas colleges and universities, new federal partnerships are being launched with big tech at research labs in Tennessee and Illinois.

Two new AMD-accelerated artificial intelligence supercomputers are being built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. One is being built at record speeds because of a new public-private partnership model, the Lux AI cluster, the Department of Energy said. 

“Lux will provide a secure, open, and efficient AI software stack to strengthen America’s innovation base and enhance U.S. competitiveness,” it says.

“Winning the AI race requires new and creative partnerships that will bring together the brightest minds and industries American technology and science has to offer,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said. “That’s why the Trump administration is announcing the first example of a new commonsense approach to computing partnerships with Lux. We are also announcing, as part of a competitive procurement process, Discovery. Working with AMD and HPE, we’re bringing new capacity online faster than ever before, turning shared innovation into national strength, and proving that America leads when private-public partners build together.”

“The Discovery system will drive scientific innovation faster and farther than ever before,” ORNL Laboratory Director Stephen Streiffer said. “Oak Ridge’s leadership in supercomputing has transformed how researchers solve problems. With Discovery and Lux, we’re accelerating the pace of Gold Standard Science at a scale that secures America’s leadership in an increasingly competitive world.” 

The DOE also announced a new partnership with a federal research facility in Illinois and big tech companies, NVIDIA and Oracle. 

Both NVIDIA and Oracle have been expanding operations in Houston, west Texas and elsewhere in response to executive orders issued by President Donald Trump to expedite AI development. 

Now, they’re partnering with the Argonne National Laboratory, the largest federally funded laboratory in the Midwest, administered by the University of Chicago in Argonne, Ill. 

The DOE claims the partnership will deliver “the DOE’s largest AI supercomputer” and “immediately deliver world-class AI computing resources to DOE researchers while simultaneously building two next-generation AI supercomputing systems at Argonne National Laboratory.”

The project’s “Solstice system” will feature 100,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to build the largest AI supercomputer in the DOE’s lab complex, it says. Another project, the Equinox system, will feature 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Construction will begin immediately for this system at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility with an expected completion next year, the DOE said. 

Oracle is also immediately providing DOE researchers with access to its AI computing resources, which use NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell architectures, the DOE said.

The systems will “enable scientists and researchers to develop and train new frontier models and reasoning models for open science using NVIDIA Megatron-Core and scale them using the NVIDIA TensorRT™ inference software stack,” DOE said. The models “will form the backbone of agentic AI workflows for scientific discovery.” 

The Equinox and Solstice systems “are designed to accelerate a broad set of scientific AI workflows;” thousands of researchers are being prepared “to effectively leverage the systems’ groundbreaking capabilities,” Argonne National Laboratory director Paul Kearns said. “This system will seamlessly connect to forefront DOE experimental facilities such as our Advanced Photon Source, allowing scientists to address some of the nation’s most pressing challenges through scientific discovery.” 

Three phases of the partnership, Oracle providing immediate access to AI resources and the Equinox and Solstice systems being delivered at Argonne, will increase researchers’ abilities “to move from idea to discovery,” the DOE said.  

Pairing DOE science and computing expertise at a national lab complex with private sector capabilities in frontier AI systems “will give DOE researchers cutting-edge tools to accelerate scientific breakthroughs and technology innovations to maintain America’s global AI leadership.” 

In comparison, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former Gov. Rick Perry, now in the private sector, are leading what they argue is the largest state-led AI effort.  

“The AI race is a race that we absolutely have to win,” Perry said this month at an event in Austin. “We have to win this AI driven or data center race because the Chinese are making great extraordinary moves and we are behind.”  

AI dominance will be defined over the next 10 years by who wins the modern AI and space race, Abbott said. “That's why there's such an urgent need on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis that we're all leaning into and striving to win that race. Because the fact of the matter is the future of civilization itself is going to be defined by the winner of that race,” The Center Square reported.