October 29, 2025
In a significant partnership aimed at accelerating scientific discovery, Nvidia has teamed up with Oracle and the US Department of Energy (DOE) to construct two cutting-edge AI supercomputers at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
The systems, named Equinox and Solstice, will be powered by Nvidia's latest Blackwell GPUs and are designed to support the development and training of advanced AI models for the scientific community.
Solstice, featuring a "record-breaking" 100,000 Blackwell GPUs, is set to become the largest AI supercomputer owned by the DOE. It will be built under the department's new public-private partnership model. Its counterpart, Equinox, will consist of 10,000 Blackwell GPUs and is scheduled to come online in the first half of 2026.
Both supercomputers will be interconnected using Nvidia networking technology. When operational, they are projected to deliver a combined peak AI performance of 2,200 exaflops.
In a related expansion of computational resources, Argonne also announced plans to launch three additional Nvidia-based systems—Tara, Minerva, and Janus—to broaden AI compute access for researchers across the United States. Specific details on the Nvidia platforms for these systems were not disclosed.
"AI is the most powerful technology of our time, and science is its greatest frontier," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. "Together with Oracle, we’re building the Department of Energy’s largest supercomputer that will serve as America’s engine for discovery, giving researchers access to the most advanced AI infrastructure to drive progress across fields ranging from healthcare research to materials science."
US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, emphasized the strategic importance of the collaboration. "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," Wright stated. "The two Argonne systems and the collaboration between the Department of Energy, Nvidia, and Oracle represent a new common-sense approach to computing partnerships. These systems will be a powerhouse for scientific and technological innovation."
The announcement was made during Nvidia's GTC event in Washington, D.C., where additional large-scale deployments were unveiled. US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly will deploy the world's first Nvidia DGX SuperPOD powered by 1,016 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs to accelerate drug discovery.
Concurrently, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico selected Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform and Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking for its forthcoming Mission and Vision AI supercomputers. Mission, expected in 2027, will handle classified applications, while Vision will support unclassified AI and open science research.
"Our integration of the Nvidia Vera Rubin platform and Quantum X800 InfiniBand fabric represents a transformative advancement of our lab," said Thom Mason, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Harnessing this level of computational performance is essential to tackling some of the most complex scientific and national security challenges."
SOURCE DCD
