NERSC installs Cech early access system ahead of Doudna

NERSC has announced delivery and installation of the NERSC-10 Pilot Early Access System (EAS) named Cech at Berkeley Lab to prepare for the full-scale NERSC-10 production system, Doudna.

• Main announcement: NERSC received the NERSC-10 Pilot Early Access System (EAS) called Cech, which is being installed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the EAS is a smaller test system to refine assembly, delivery, installation, and integration processes ahead of deploying the full production system Doudna in late 2026 (also referenced as “end of the year” in comments). Key technical details: 72 NVIDIA Grace CPUs, 144 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, 5.76 petaflop/s FP64 and 1.44 exaflop/s NVFP4 capability, networking via NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand, Dell IR7000 direct liquid-cooled racks, first U.S. deployment of Rittal in-row V3.5 coolant distribution unit, and Dell’s PowerCool Enclosed Rear Door Heat Exchanger (eRDHx) claiming up to 60% reduced cooling costs versus traditional options.
• Background & implementation details: The EAS (Cech) is a public–private partnership involving NERSC, Dell Technologies, NVIDIA, and VAST Data; it will be used for software stack development (Omnia, OpenCHAMI), benchmarking, telemetry/monitoring, storage integration with Community File System and HPSS, and ESnet connectivity. The EAS is explicitly a testing/development milestone (not yet available to users) to ensure a smooth deployment of the full Doudna production system; the article is an announcement of this delivery and installation milestone.