Supercomputing in the Tennessee woods

If you didn't know it was there, you'd have no idea that deep in the Tennessee woods, about a 20-minute drive from Knoxville, is one of the world's great supercomputer labs. It's no accident, of course. The facility is part of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of the world's leading research institutions and the site of the reactor in which plutonium for the first atomic bombs was refined during World War II.

Reporter Daniel Terdiman stopped in at Oak Ridge last week to get a first-hand look at the existing supercomputers — and to hear about a new one coming online soon that will be among the world's most powerful. He also saw that original reactor and met one of the scientists leading the research centre's work into more efficient biomass for ethanol.

The above image shows one row of the lab's Cray X1E, the largest vector supercomputer in the world and the 175th most powerful computer overall. It is rated for 18 teraflops of processing power. It is arrayed in multiple rows, with aisles for walking through. The computer is liquid-cooled, and piping was installed into the floor for that purpose.

This image gallery is from the Road Trip 2008 series featured on ZDNet.co.uk's sister site, CNET News.com.