As chip industry chases AI, US national labs look to newcomers for supercomputers

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico: In a nondescript building on Kirtland Air Force Base on the high desert of New Mexico, liquid-cooled supercomputers gurgle and hum their way through some of the most complex math problems the U.S. government seeks to solve: simulating how hypersonic nuclear weapons would move through the earth’s atmosphere, or what would happen if one nuclear warhead detonated near another.

For more than a decade, the chips handling this secretive and demanding work came from mainstream semiconductor firms like Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices.