Collaboration is one of the foundational precepts of any successful entrepreneurial venture. We’ve seen it in action dozens of times, and we even see initiatives like The Downtown Project cleave to it as part of a personal philosophy, driving them towards major success.
We might wager that part of what makes collaboration so important to entrepreneurs is that it has a measurable effect and impact on not just their own ideas, but also on the communities they support.
Recently Switch SUPERNAP, a Las Vegas based colocation data center, announced that they would be embarking on a collaboration effort with Intel and the University of Las Vegas (UNLV). Together, these three institutions will be bringing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to Las Vegas.
The UNLV Supercomputer – or Cherry Creek, as it is called, heads to Las Vegas after the university was awarded its use by Intel. It will be housed in Switch’s Las Vegas SUPERNAP data center, and while it won’t be on the UNLV campus, researchers will be able to tap into Cherry Creek’s world-class speed and power via SUPERNAP’s connectivity network.
“Supercomputers have become an indispensable part of almost every industry,” says Donald Snyder, President of UNLV. “Working together with Intel and Switch, UNLV has a tremendous opportunity to play a leading role in big data research and economic development partnerships that require high-performance computing.”
Consider for a moment what something like this will do for research at UNLV; complicated analyses that at one point may have taken years will now be completed in mere days. Intel, Switch, and UNLV say that Cherry Creek will act as a catalyst for scientific discovery across advancing fields like genomics, bioinformatics, molecular modeling, and medical and climate research.
That’s a quantifiable impact which hits the nuclear community at UNLV, the local ecosystem in Las Vegas, and then extends into macro levels from there. This is collaborative impact in direct action, and this is what entrepreneurs love about it: it’s power to change.
“We understand how important this scientific research will be for economic development in the region,” says Rob Roy, CEO and Founder of Switch SUPERNAP. “The SUPERNAP ecosystem will accelerate the development of new technology and provide the necessary industry relationships to advance UNLV’s efforts.”
Cherry Creek is a most welcome addition to the already strong arsenal of computing power at UNLV.