Photos: Germany's Leibniz supercomputer

Could this be every techie's dream job? To design a supercomputer from scratch, with no expense spared, no need for private sector investment and, if at all possible, no human involvement in the running of it. This is the challenge that one supercomputer specialist is wrestling with in Germany.

Germany's second most powerful supercomputer in Leibniz, near Munich, is going through an upgrade that should see it double in performance in 2007.

The Leibniz Rechenzentrum (LRZ), a specialist supercomputer centre, was only completed two years ago. According to the director of the centre, Professor Dr Heinz-Gerd Hegering, its Silicon Graphics (SGI) computer was designed from scratch and built with an eye to repeated upgrading of the main components as supercomputing technology improved.

The design of the completed building is certainly eye-catching, with a flat, cube shape that dominates the squat-science park that surrounds it. It looks, if anything, like a Borg ship beamed down from space and left marooned in a sea of bland low-rises.

The alien comparison is a valid one. Professor Hegering has planned this system to operate without people, fully "lights out", with only robotic tape storage loaders moving within its walls. During our visit to the centre we saw only one other person in this massive facility.

Considering that the whole building is only there to house one supercomputer, it is massive, almost twice the height of the five-storey building standing next to it.

The supercomputer sits at the top of the building, with only the exhaust blowers for the air-conditioning system and the roof above it. The computer room is in a cage in the centre. Around it, on all four sides, is a space stretching from the ground to the top of the building, which helps shield the computer.