The new technology will help manage the US nuclear arsenal and accelerate drug development for diseases including cancer.
Published on October 27, 2025
The United States has contributed $1 billion Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Building two supercomputers that will tackle big scientific problems ranging from nuclear power to cancer cures to national security.
Reuters news agency first reported the new partnership, citing Energy Secretary Chris Wright and AMD CEO Lisa Su.
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The US is building two machines to ensure the country has enough supercomputers for increasingly complex experiments that require enormous amounts of data-crunching capacity. Machines can accelerate the process of scientific discovery in areas that the US is focusing on.
Energy Secretary Wright said the systems would “supercharge” the development of nuclear and fusion energy, technologies for defense and national security, and medicine.
Scientists and companies are trying to replicate fusion, the reaction that fuels the Sun, by jamming light atoms in plasma gas under pressure to release intense heat and large amounts of energy. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but plasmas are unstable and we need to rebuild the center of the sun on Earth,” Wright told Reuters.
“We’re going to make massively faster progress using these AI systems to compute, which I believe will be practical ways to use fusion energy in the next two or three years.”
Wright said the supercomputer would help manage the US nuclear arsenal and accelerate drug discovery by simulating ways to treat cancer at the molecular level.
“My hope is that in the next five or eight years, we will turn most cancers, many of which are terminal deaths today, into manageable conditions,” Wright said.
‘Speed and Agility’
Plans include building the first computer, called Lux, and coming online within the next six months. It will be based around AMD’s MI355X artificial intelligence chips and the design will also include central processing units (CPUs) and networking chips made by AMD. The system is co-developed by AMD, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HP), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
AMD’s Su said the Lux deployment was the fastest she had seen for a computer of this size.
“It’s the speed and agility that we wanted … for US AI efforts,” Su said.
ORNL Director Stephen Streifer said the Lux supercomputer will deliver about three times the artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of current supercomputers.
The second, more advanced computer, called Discovery, will be based around AMD’s MI430 series of AI chips that are tuned for high-performance computing. The system will be designed by ORNL, HP and AMD. Discovery is expected to be delivered in 2028 and ready for operations in 2029.
Streffer said he expects huge profits, but could not say how big the computing power would be.
The MI430 is a special variant of AMD’s MI400 series that combines key features of traditional supercomputing chips with features for running AI applications, Su said.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) will host the computers, the companies will provide the machines and capital costs, and the two sides will share computing power, a DOE official said.
The two supercomputers based on AMD chips are the first of its kind in partnership with private industry and DOE labs across the country, the official said.
AMD stock was up 0.7 percent by 12:15 pm in New York (16:15 GMT).