Science and Technology Highlights

Unveiled at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany, the June 2024 Top500 lists three systems with identical components — one computing rack each from El Capitan’s “Early Delivery System” (EDS), LLNL’s newest unclassified supercomputer RZAdams and its unclassified “sister” system Tuolumne. All three registered 19.65 petaFLOPs on the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, ranking them among the world’s 50 fastest.
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LLNL’s El Capitan debuted on new Top500 list of world’s most powerful supercomp…

Three new systems currently or soon-to-be sited at LLNL debuted on the latest Top500 list of most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Artwork illustrating a new study combining atomistic simulations, machine learning potential, and data-driven methods to study the chemical speciation of amorphous carbon nitride using X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectra.
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Accelerating material characterization: Machine learning meets X-ray absorption…

LLNL scientists develop a new approach that can rapidly predict the structure and chemical composition of heterogeneous materials.

In a groundbreaking development for addressing future viral pandemics, a multi-institutional team involving Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers has successfully combined an artificial intelligence-backed platform with supercomputing to redesign and restore the effectiveness of antibodies whose ability to fight viruses has been compromised by viral evolution. The work was published in the journal Nature.
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GUIDE team develops approach to redesign antibodies against viral pandemics

A multi-institutional team involving LLNL researchers successfully combines an artificial intelligence (AI)-backed platform with supercomputing to redesign and restore antibody effectiveness. 

A 2D MARBL simulation of the N210808 “Burning Plasma” shot performed at the National Ignition Facility at the onset of ignition. This calculation consists of 19 million high-order quadrature points and ran on rzAdams (on AMD MI300A GPUs).
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LLNL team accelerates multi-physics simulations with El Capitan predecessor sys…

Researchers at LLNL accelerate and add features to complex multi-physics simulations run on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), a development that could advance high performance computing and engineering.

Opportunistic pathogenic species, such as Acinetobacter, are prevalent in combat wound infections and commonly found on the gear of U.S. military service members.
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Mitigating the risk of infection in combat-related injuries

To support the early detection of potentially detrimental microbial factors, LLNL researchers have developed a targeted panel for the capture and sequencing of microbial genomic signatures.

During exploration drilling at the Halleck Creek Rare Earth project, geologists conduct field surface research.
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Concentrating on rare-earth elements

Using a bioengineered protein-based technology, LLNL scientists and collaborators develop a new separation technique for rare-earth elements (REE).

LLNL researchers have have found that soils, a huge carbon pool, tend to lose carbon as global temperatures rise. The research appears in Nature Geoscience.
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Understanding soil carbon's sensitivity to increasing global temperatures

LLNL scientists and collaborators quantify and model the emergent temperature sensitivity of soil organic carbon.

A photo taken by a scanning electron microscope shows a pit at the surface of an additively manufactured (3D-printed) stainless steel part.
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LLNL researchers uncover culprits behind pitting corrosion in 3D-printed stainl…

LLNL scientists publish a paper on the the mysterious world of pitting corrosion in additively manufactured (3D-printed) stainless steel 316L in seawater.

Simon Pang (left) and Buddhinie Jayathilake assemble and prepare a prototype bubble column electrobioreactor to test additively manufactured three-dimensional electrodes. Under their project, excess renewable electricity from wind and solar sources would be stored in chemical bonds as renewable natural gas.
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New technique converts excess renewable energy to natural gas

LLNL researchers and partners develop a new storage method for excess renewable electricity from wind and solar sources.

Supercomputer simulations predicting the synthesis pathways for the elusive BC8 "super-diamond", involving shock compressions of diamond precursor, inspire ongoing Discovery Science experiments at NIF.
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Supercomputer simulations of super-diamond suggest a path to its creation

A team of LLNL scientists conducts multi-million atomic molecular-dynamics simulations to uncover required temperature and pressure conditions for super-diamond creation.