Nvidia (NVDA) announced on Tuesday that it’s teaming with the US Department of Energy to develop seven AI supercomputers at both the Argonne National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The first phase of the rollout will see Nvidia and Oracle partner to build two new supercomputers at Argonne called Equinox and Solstice. Equinox will run on 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, while Solstice will use 200 megawatts worth of chips.
Both systems, Nvidia says, will be used to build one trillion parameter AI models, simulation, and scientific computing.
Additional Argonne supercomputers will include Tara, Minerva, and Janus. The Los Alamos supercomputers, called Mission and Vision, will be built by HPE and run on Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin superchips.
Mission, the company said, will power classified applications for the National Nuclear Security Agency, while Vision is built for unclassified AI applications.
Nvidia also said it’s working with nine US national labs and a host of additional companies on quantum computing technologies via its new NVQLink technology, which pairs a classic GPU supercomputer to a quantum computer to help address quantum error correction.
Rather than the bits represented by ones and zeros that classic computers use, quantum computers use qubits. But qubits, unlike standard bits, are susceptible to outside interference, which can impact the results of quantum calculations.
That has made it difficult to build a practical quantum computer that can pump out the correct answer to an equation without fail. Quantum error correction is meant to address errors caused by that interference.
In addition to the AI supercomputer, Nvidia is developing an all-American, AI-native wireless stack for 6G connectivity. The company said it’s working with US firms, including T-Mobile (TMUS) and Cisco (CSCO), to ensure that America can deploy 6G networks built using US technology.
Nvidia has been pushing the concept of sovereign AI, or AI systems built to power research deemed important by national governments to help increase sales beyond individual companies and hyperscalers like Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOGL, GOOG), Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT).
The effort is paying off, with Nvidia signing deals with nations worldwide, as well as companies within those countries.
Nvidia reports its third quarter earnings after the bell on Nov. 19. Investors will almost certainly want to know more about how the company is monetizing its sovereign AI efforts and how much it’s contributing to the company’s bottom line.
