SC26 in Chicago to showcase AI and supercomputing convergence

Exascale computing, accelerated systems, data storage and high-speed networking are driving a merger between artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. This convergence will take center stage at SC26, running Nov. 17–19 in Chicago, where Dell Technologies Inc., Google LLC, Nvidia Corp. and other industry leaders plan to unveil how AI and HPC workloads are defining the future of supercomputing.

"SC26 provides an important opportunity to examine how the convergence of AI, high-performance computing and application development are reshaping enterprise infrastructure priorities," said theCUBE Research's Paul Nashawaty. "Organizations must connect high-performance infrastructure, accessible data and modern application development to move beyond experimentation and accelerate production-ready AI deployments. For Dell and the broader HPC ecosystem, SC26 offers a platform to demonstrate how integrated compute, storage and AI infrastructure can address these challenges."

TheCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio, will deliver on-site reporting and exclusive interviews with industry leaders and analysts throughout the conference. Coverage will examine how exascale systems and AI infrastructure are shaping supercomputing's trajectory, with particular attention to accelerated computing's role in transforming research, quantum-HPC integration and agentic AI's push toward autonomous scientific discovery.

Quantum and high-performance computing

Dell and Nvidia have collaborated with the U.S. Department of Energy to construct the Doudna supercomputer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The machine will employ Nvidia's Vera Rubin CPU-GPU platform and Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking integrated into Dell's PowerEdge servers and rack systems to handle large-scale scientific computing and data-intensive research.

In September, Dell announced a partnership with quantum-computing firm Diraq to embed quantum processing units into HPC and AI server infrastructure. This initiative aims to combine quantum processors with classical computing systems within commercial data centers.

"The market for high-performance computing is meeting the AI factory at the point of innovation," said theCUBE Research's Dave Vellante. "HPC has always led the most challenging data problems, so this trend makes perfect sense. Quantum will be the next big inflection point and we're seeing that new technologies are often complementary to existing infrastructure. We expect that to be the case between accelerated computing and quantum, particularly in the area of error correction."

New system architectures drive supercomputing

Google Cloud is constructing infrastructure to meet HPC requirements across manufacturing, health care, life sciences, weather forecasting and electronic design automation.

Google's H4D VM represents a centerpiece of the company's HPC strategy. Launched the previous year, this high-performance computing virtual machine runs on fifth-generation AMD EPYC processors and delivers whole-node VM performance exceeding 12,000 GFLOPS with memory bandwidth surpassing 950 GB/s.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has deployed H4D VMs in practical applications. Google Cloud was selected in July as the primary provider of high-performance computing infrastructure for the Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System, enabling meteorologists and researchers to construct advanced forecasting models.

"Systems are the key in supercomputing advances," said theCUBE Research's John Furrier. "Different architectures. Different bets. Same underlying problem: How do you keep the multiplication engines doing useful work instead of waiting for data? That's why I think the next era of AI infrastructure won't be defined by the 'best chip.' It will be defined by the best system architecture."

Platforms for cloud and analytics

Beyond Dell and Google, additional firms are advancing HPC through cloud infrastructure and analytics capabilities. Vultr Inc. is constructing high-performance cloud computing platforms for AI, risk management, compliance and fraud prevention, expanding its presence across 33 global regions through CPU and GPU resources and open, composable architectures suited to the agentic AI landscape.

Data sharing and access consistency across platforms has become essential as HPC expands. Omni Analytics Inc. is developing a data collaboration platform that interfaces with cloud data warehouses directly, eliminating the need to preload or duplicate data.

"As organizations invest in increasingly sophisticated AI environments, the competitive differentiator will be the ability to optimize the entire technology stack from data movement and storage performance to application development and deployment," Nashawaty said. "The central SC26 narrative is that the future of AI supercomputing will be defined not simply by how much compute organizations deploy, but by how effectively they translate that investment into measurable business and scientific outcomes."