Construction was scheduled to begin ceremonially today on two new buildings at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, including one that will house an advanced supercomputer which can be used to simulate testing of nuclear weapons (see GSN, March 26).

The $83 million Terascale Simulation Facility will be built next to the building that houses ASCI White, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, according to the Contra Costa Times (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2001).  The new facility is designed to support two supercomputers running 10 times as fast as ASCI White, allowing it to continue operating while the new supercomputer, ASCI Purple, is built.  The computer building will have a special raised floor so workers can stand and access cables beneath the supercomputers, currently kept in dozens of cases.

The facility also will have an adjacent building containing offices, an auditorium and a display room to assist scientists in visualizing data created by the supercomputers, said Randy Christensen, ASCI’s deputy director.  The new building will be the first at Lawrence Livermore designed exclusively to hold the supercomputers, he said (Andrea Widener, Contra Costa Times, April 4).

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