US supercomputer taps Intel spinout Cornelis Networks for networking chips

Cisco Systems

16/06/2026 13:00

By Stephen Nellis

    SAN FRANCISCO, June 15 (Reuters) - Cornelis, an Intel INTC.O spinout developing networking technology aimed at data centers, on Tuesday said that its chips are now being used by a U.S. supercomputer used for nuclear weapons work.
Under the National Nuclear Security Administration, a trio of U.S. national labs works to develop and maintain the nation's nuclear weapons with extremely accurate computer simulations of nuclear reactions, one of the most demanding tasks in the entire computing industry. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said Tuesday that it has tapped Cornelis chips to connect 952 computers in its new "Lynx" system.
The Lynx system is part of a $70 million program at the three labs to build workhorse supercomputers out of standard, off-the-shelf components from the computing industry.
Cornelis, which spun out of Intel in 2020 and in which the chipmaker remains a minority shareholder, is developing a networking technology called Omni-Path that seeks to challenge rival networking chips from Nvidia NVDA.O, Broadcom AVGO.O for applications where a computing problem is so large that it must be spread out over many different computers.
One of the features of Cornelis chips is traffic routing technology that, for example, recognizes when it may be faster to send data to a computer that's further away if all nearby computers are clogged with network traffic.
"You might drive a mile longer, but you get there 10 minutes faster because you avoided the stadium traffic from the FIFA World Cup," said Lisa Spelman, CEO of Cornelis.
     

 (Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Kim Coghill)
 ((stephen.nellis@thomsonreuters.com))