Construction Manager Named for NCSA Petascale Facility

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ncsaClayco Inc of St. Louis announced today that it was named the prime construction manager for the new NCSA Petascale Computing Facility at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  The 90,000 square foot facility will house the the upcoming NSF Track 1 machine, Blue Waters, built by IBM.  What goes under 90,000 square feet?  Glad you asked…

.: Blue Waters command center
.: Systems administration center
.: Office space for 50 people
.: 20,000 sqft raised machine floor [~5,000 floor tiles]
.: 24 megawatt electrical capacity
.: 5,400 tons of water cooling capacity

    The building is designed to be somewhat environmentally friendly [considering its scale].  Their three cooling towers will be naturally cooled by the outside air, rather than electrically.  They are also designing the structure to withstand an F3 tornado and winds up to 165mph.  Now, if they could only design a facility to withstand the destructive force of my toddler.

    For more info, read the full release here.