HPE is building two supercomputers for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of which will be based on the company’s new HPE Cray Supercomputing GX5000 platform.

The two systems include a second-generation exascale supercomputer dubbed Discovery, a GX5000-based system which will be the successor to ORNL’s Frontier, and an AI cluster named Lux, which HPE said will support AI and machine learning workloads with a “multi-tenant cloud-like platform.”

In a briefing ahead of the announcement, HPE said it expects to start delivering GX5000-based systems from early 2027.

HPE said its forthcoming GX5000 platform utilizes AI and high-performance computing (HPC) architecture to “streamline operations site-wide and across distributed clusters.”

Discovery will be comprised of AMD 6th generation Epyc processors, codenamed “Venice,” with AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs, interconnected with HPE Slingshot and cooled by HPE’s liquid cooling technology.

The system will also include HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems K3000, reportedly providing 300 percent more input/output operations per second (IOPS) per storage rack compared to Frontier.

K3000 is “the industry’s first factory-built storage system with embedded Distributed Asynchronous Object Storage (DAOS) open source software,” HPE said, making it a “cost-effective, all-flash storage system” complementing HPE’s E2000 storage systems, which Discovery will also feature.

HPE said the GX5000 platform is purpose-built to scale to exascale performance, offering greater density than HPE’s previous platforms, using 25 percent less data center space per rack and providing 127 percent more power – up to 25kW – per compute slot.

ORNL’s Lux cluster will be comprised of AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs, and AMD Pensando networking, cooled by HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 direct liquid-cooling technology. Designed to boost access to AI resources, HPE said Lux will provide US-based researchers with cloud-like access to a sovereign AI factory that specifically supports training and inference.

“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 US,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO at HPE. “We are proud to build on that leadership innovation and strong public-private partnership with the US Department of Energy, ORNL, and AMD, to build Discovery and Lux, accelerating the next era of scientific discovery and AI innovation.”

Bronson Messer, director of science, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, added: “We are excited for Discovery and Lux to expand the science that researchers are able to do at Oak Ridge."

“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.”