As you may have heard, there's a new supercomputer, which will be based in Cheyenne and will rank among the world's fastest supercomputers in existence. What you may not know is that the new supercomputer has a new name, thanks to the help from an eighth-grader in Riverton, WY.

Cael Arbogast, 13, recently won a contest to name the new supercomputer. The contest picked the new name out of over 200 submissions from Wyoming K-12 students. The name of the new supercomputer will be 'Derecho'.

If you know anything about the weather, then you might be aware that a derecho is a weather event that can bring about damaging storms with hurricane-force winds along with heavy rains and flooding. The National Center for Atmospheric Research made the announcement on Monday (April 12th).

Cael said in his submission for the contest:

I picked this name because a derecho is an intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorm that travels long and great distances, bringing many storms with it...This new supercomputer has to move at fast speed for everybody to use all across the country.

The purpose of the new supercomputer coming to Wyoming is to help study several scientific-based issues such as climate change, wildfires, severe weather, and solar flares. Its home will be at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne.

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise won a bid back in January to financially back the new supercomputer center in Cheyenne. The bid was in the range between $35 million and $40 million. The new 'Derecho' is known in technical terms as the HPE-Cray EX and is 3.5 times faster than the current machine located at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer Center in Cheyenne. That equates to one of the world's 25 fastest. It will be operational in 2022.

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