Travel just few miles west of bustling Cheyenne, Wyoming, a you’ll find yourself in big-sky country. Tall-grass plains line the highway, snow-packed peaks pierce the sky, and round-edged granite formations jut out of the ground. But in this bucolic scene sits an alien building: a blocky, almost pre-fab structure with a white rotunda, speckled with dozens of windows that look out onto the grounds. Inside, it’s home to two supercomputers that focus on the vast landscape above.
Travel just few miles west of bustling Cheyenne, Wyoming, a you’ll find yourself in big-sky country. Tall-grass plains line the highway, snow-packed peaks pierce the sky, and round-edged granite formations jut out of the ground. But in this bucolic scene sits an alien building: a blocky, almost pre-fab structure with a white rotunda, speckled with dozens of windows that look out onto the grounds. Inside, it’s home to two supercomputers that focus on the vast landscape above.
This building belongs to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which spends money from the National Science Foundation to learn about things like atmospheric chemistry, climate, weather, and wildfires. That kind of research didn’t always require supercomputers. But today, the kinds of three-dimensional, detail-oriented models that scientists need—as they churn through everything from wind calculations to simulations of the sun—require so much processor power that no desktop will do. So in January, the center commissioned a brand-new supercomputer here called Cheyenne, the 20th fastest machine on the planet.
Cheyenne isn’t alone out here in the wild. Turns out, Wyoming’s climate, tax code, and utility infrastructure make it appealing to people who want to put a whole lot of processing units in really big rooms. Right down the road, Microsoft runs a massive data center. And more are likely on the way, as the state’s shiny new facilities and financial incentives catch the eyes of other businesses.
Read more at Wired
Photo credit: en:user:Daderot via Wikimedia Commons
