Why Sierra the Supercomputer Had to Die

It was the government that decided it was time for Sierra to die. Sierra, it must be said, was a supercomputer, and so had never really been alive in the first place. But by any objective measure, she lived an impressive life. She resided in northern California at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she was minded by dozens of staff at the lab’s computing complex, in Building 453. She completed her final jobs late last year, in October, before she went offline for good. She was 7 years old.

According to the TOP500, which ranks these mega-machines, Sierra was once the second-fastest supercomputer in the world. She was conceived in a Chicago hotel conference room more than a decade ago, at a technical discussion for officials from America’s national labs. The ultimate designer baby, Sierra was assembled from thousands of IBM Power9 CPUs and ...