Wanna Rent One of the World's Biggest Supercomputers?

Lawrence Livermore National Labs is home to Sequoia, a classified supercomputer that’s used to simulate nuclear bombs. It’s a number-crunching wonder, the most powerful computer in the world.

But just a few feet from Sequoia, lab technicians have now assembled the first two server racks of what will one day be Sequoia’s little brother, Vulcan: a mighty supercomputer that anybody can use. Well, not exactly everybody. You’ve got to pay Lawrence Livermore a fair chunk of change for access to the computer. The lab is a little hazy on pricing, but clearly, renting out one of the world’s largest supercomputers isn’t going to be cheap.

It’s part of a new program the lab announced with IBM on Wednesday, called Deep Computing Solutions. They hope to make big-time computer simulations available to companies that might not have money or the technical wherewithal to build and run their own supercomputers — a proposition that could appeal to engineering companies or finance firms or biotechnology outfits.