Advanced supercomputer will head to new Round Rock data center
ROUND ROCK, Texas - Round Rock will soon be home to a one-of-a-kind supercomputer. It's part of the University of Texas’ Advanced Computer Center.
This is something the Chamber of Commerce and the City of Round Rock have had in motion for a while now.
Two years ago, the city council approved an economic incentive agreement to bring a new data center, Sabey, which would eventually lead to the TACC supercomputer.
"The building is designed to never go down, and so things like Instagram, Snapchat, and everything we do day to day, typically is going to run through a data center like ours," said Mark Noonan, senior vice president of revenue for the eastern U.S. locations of Sabey.
The new Sabey data center is located off Louis Henna Blvd and AW Grimes. It’s built to hold some of the most advanced technology out there, including a supercomputer.
"The computer is designed to service things that are science in nature, research in nature, health care, weather modeling, but it’s a computer that can literally run in cycles and a speed that’s just really striking," said Noonan. "Very, very fast computer."
Sabey partnered with the Texas Advanced Computer Center at UT.
The supercomputer, also called "Horizon," received $457 million in funding from the National Science Foundation.
"It's literally designed and hopefully going to be one of the fastest supercomputers in the entire world," said Noonan. "That's their goal."
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The high-tech supercomputer will require intricate care.
"They have really high power loads, which means they have very high heat loads and so our facility was actually designed with the flexibility to cool these servers using liquid technology," said Noonan. "So, you’ll hear people talk about liquid cooling now in the data center industry and that’s a big part of why we were a good fit for this horizon project with TACC."
The Texas Advanced Computer Center is expected to finish installing the supercomputer at Sabey’s Round Rock data center by 2026, bringing 40–50 jobs with it.
"I think Round Rock and the Austin metro region is going to be a great new center for a lot of data center projects," said Noonan.
Sabey opened its building just two months ago.
They are about to start construction on a second building, which should be done in the next few years.