Keep pulling the thread on Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
A specific simulation code used in Commonwealth Fusion Systems' design workflow takes two to three weeks to converge for a single instance, whereas an AI surrogate model trained on its output is approximately 1,000 times faster.
A key goal for the Commonwealth Fusion Systems and NVIDIA partnership is to develop a digital twin of the SPARC reactor capable of predicting the results of its first plasma pulse before it happens and updating that prediction in real-time.
NVIDIA and Commonwealth Fusion Systems aim to integrate an AI workflow that models heat dissipation from the SPARC plasma into the reactor's initial design files within the next six to nine months.
The SPARC fusion facility in Massachusetts, operated by Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is architected and wired similarly to a data center to support its computational workflows.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems and NVIDIA formalized their collaboration in the summer of 2023, establishing embedded working groups to develop digital twins and apply AI to accelerate fusion research.
NVIDIA has been collaborating for several years with institutions such as Princeton Plasma Physics Lab and MIT on fusion simulation codes as part of the Department of Energy's Exascale program.
Within six months of formalizing their collaboration, NVIDIA and Commonwealth Fusion Systems have integrated the initial components of a digital twin for the SPARC reactor into NVIDIA's Omniverse platform.
Some of the largest civilian computational simulations ever run on Department of Energy supercomputers have been dedicated to understanding plasma physics within fusion devices.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems anticipates that AI-accelerated plasma simulations will eventually become fast enough to be integrated into the real-time control systems of its future fusion power plants.
The United States currently holds a competitive advantage in fusion energy development because its adversaries lack key components of the necessary technological and industrial ecosystem.
The U.S. fusion development ecosystem currently lacks sufficient government-funded test facilities for components, which is identified as a critical missing piece of infrastructure.
A clear financing and grid-integration pathway for the first commercial fusion power plants is a currently missing component of the U.S. energy ecosystem.