data centers - 2025 ACF Regionals

Question

In 2011, one of these facilities in Oregon ran into issues when the local climate’s effect on cold aisle containment caused a literal cloud to form inside the building and begin raining. For 10 points each:

[10m] Name these facilities that often receive tax breaks in remote towns but may stretch local grids. A “colocation” or “colo” (“CO-lo”) is one of these facilities that rents out space, in contrast to “enterprise” ones.

ANSWER: data centers [accept web farms or cloud computing centers or computing clusters or server arrays or server parks or similar answers; prompt on servers or warehouses; reject “supercomputers”]

[10e] The densest data center hub in the world is in this state’s Data Center Alley around Ashburn, which is part of this state’s Dulles Technology Corridor west of Arlington and Alexandria.

ANSWER: Virginia [or VA]

[10h] Everest Pipkin’s essay on the invisibility of data centers calls them examples of these anonymous spaces. Marc Augé’s (“oh-ZHAY’s”) book on the “anthropology of supermodernity” coined this term for spaces like hotels and airports.

ANSWER: non-places (Pipkin’s essay is “It Was Raining in the Data Center.”)

Back to bonuses

Summary


Florida	2025-02-01	Y	3	16.67	100%	33%	33%
Great Lakes	2025-02-01	Y	6	10.00	100%	0%	0%
Lower Mid-Atlantic	2025-02-01	Y	6	13.33	100%	33%	0%
Midwest	2025-02-01	Y	6	18.33	100%	83%	0%
North	2025-02-01	Y	3	10.00	67%	33%	0%
Northeast	2025-02-01	Y	5	16.00	100%	60%	0%
Overflow	2025-02-01	Y	4	17.50	100%	50%	25%
Pacific Northwest	2025-02-01	Y	2	20.00	100%	100%	0%
South Central	2025-02-01	Y	2	5.00	50%	0%	0%
Southeast	2025-02-01	Y	4	7.50	75%	0%	0%
UK	2025-02-01	Y	5	14.00	80%	40%	20%
Upper Mid-Atlantic	2025-02-01	Y	9	15.56	89%	67%	0%
Upstate NY	2025-02-01	Y	3	13.33	100%	33%	0%

Data


Florida A	Valencia A	10	10	0	20
Florida B	UCF C	0	10	10	20
Michigan A	Carnegie Mellon A	0	10	0	10
Michigan C	Carnegie Mellon B	0	10	0	10
Kenyon	Case Western B	0	10	0	10
Michigan D	Ohio State B	0	10	0	10
Michigan B	Michigan State	0	10	0	10
Ohio State A	Case Western A	0	10	0	10
Duke	Liberty A	0	10	0	10
South Carolina	Liberty B	10	10	0	20
UNC B	William & Mary	10	10	0	20
Virginia Tech A	UNC C	0	10	0	10
UNC D	Virginia A	0	10	0	10
Wake Forest	Liberty C	0	10	0	10
Chicago B	Illinois B	10	10	0	20
Chicago C	Illinois A	10	10	0	20
Chicago A	Chicago D	10	10	0	20
Missouri	Illinois C	10	10	0	20
WashU A	Indiana B	10	10	0	20
WashU B	Indiana A	0	10	0	10
Carleton	Iowa State	0	10	0	10
Winona State	Minnesota B	0	10	0	10
Wisconsin B	Wisconsin A	10	0	0	10
Georgetown A	Northwestern B	10	10	0	20
Notre Dame C	Notre Dame B	0	10	0	10
Purdue	Iowa	10	10	0	20
Northwestern A	Stanford B	0	10	10	20
Alberta	UW B	10	10	0	20
UW A	UBC	10	10	0	20
ASU	Texas B	0	0	0	0
TAMU	Texas A	0	10	0	10
Tennessee A	Georgia Tech A	0	0	0	0
Georgia Tech C	Louisville A	0	10	0	10
Georgia Tech B	Vanderbilt A	0	10	0	10
Bruin A	Alabama A	0	10	0	10
Cambridge C	Cambridge A	0	10	0	10
Cambridge E	Durham	0	10	0	10
Imperial A	Manchester	10	10	10	30
NYU C	Oxford B	10	10	0	20
Southampton B	Warwick A	0	0	0	0
Cornell B	NYU A	10	10	0	20
Haverford B	George Washington A	0	0	0	0
Columbia C	John Jay College	0	10	0	10
Maryland A	Johns Hopkins A	0	10	0	10
George Washington B	NYU B	10	10	0	20
Haverford A	Penn B	10	10	0	20
Penn A	Rutgers A	10	10	0	20
Vassar A	Maryland B	10	10	0	20
Yale A	Columbia B	10	10	0	20
BU	Brandeis A	0	10	0	10
Brandeis B	Harvard A	0	10	0	10
Harvard B	Dartmouth A	10	10	0	20
Tufts A	Brown A	10	10	0	20
MIT A	UMass Boston	10	10	0	20
Cornell C	Binghamton A	0	10	0	10
RIT A	Cornell D	10	10	0	20
ESF A	RIT B	0	10	0	10
Florida State A	UCF B	0	10	0	10