How to Power a Computer That Big

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Each of the 74 cabinets weighing as much as two F-150 pickup trucks is like sticking in my head. How do you power something that big? This is a really complicated system, so I'm going to let the experts explain. What you hear are actually these very large pumps pumping that 6,000 gallons of water to the system every minute.

Last May, the Oak Ridge National Lab, run by the US Department of Energy, unveiled Frontier–the world's fastest supercomputer. It’s capable of performing a quintillion calculations per second, breaking what's called the exascale barrier.

The system requires its own power plant, 6,000 gallons of water to keep it cool, and a highly trained staff to operate. So what can it do? And who gets to use it?

We set out for Knoxville, Tennessee to try to wrap our brains around Frontier’s limitless potential.

See more about Frontier here: It Takes 6,000 Gallons of Water to Cool the World’s Fastest Supercomputer

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