The data center, which opens next month, will house a 29,000-core Xeon supercomputer built by SGI that's capable of reaching speeds of up to 383 teraflops.

The facility wasn't originally intended to house a data center, but NOAA estimates that building a new data center from scratch would have cost approximately double the amount budgeted for the project.

The Air Force Research Laboratory's Defense Supercomputing Center needed to upgrade mechanical and electrical systems in a 40-year-old data center to accommodate a new supercomputer. Among other things, this nearly 83,000-square-foot building needed an increase in its electric load capacity from 3.3 megawatts to 8MW. It also needed new water-cooled chillers capable of handling a Cray supercomputer with 30, 45kW racks. It has 26,600 square feet of raised floor space.