A networking technology company that spun out of Intel is making its mark on some of the most demanding computing work in the country — simulating nuclear weapons reactions.
Cornelis, which separated from Intel in 2020 and in which the chipmaker still holds a minority stake, announced Tuesday that its chips are now powering a supercomputer used for nuclear weapons research in the United States.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory revealed it has chosen Cornelis chips to connect 952 computers within its newly built system, known as “Lynx.” The laboratory operates under the National Nuclear Security Administration, alongside two other U.S. national labs, and together they use highly precise computer simulations of nuclear reactions to develop and maintain the country’s nuclear arsenal — considered one of the most computationally intensive challenges in the entire tech industry.
The Lynx system is one piece of a broader $70 million initiative across the three laboratories, aimed at constructing reliable, high-performance supercomputers using standard, commercially available hardware rather than custom-built components.
Cornelis is working to establish its Omni-Path networking technology as a serious competitor to chips made by rivals such as Nvidia and Broadcom. The technology is designed for situations where a computing task is too large for a single machine and must be distributed across many computers at once.
A key advantage of Cornelis chips is their ability to intelligently route data traffic. Rather than sending information through a congested path, the chips can identify a less crowded route — even if it’s technically a longer one — to get the data to its destination more quickly.
Lisa Spelman, CEO of Cornelis, described it this way: “You might drive a mile longer, but you get there 10 minutes faster because you avoided the stadium traffic from the FIFA World Cup.”
