Silicon Hills
Silicon Hills is a nickname for the cluster of high-tech companies in the Austin metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Texas. The name is analogous to Silicon Valley, but refers to the hilly terrain on the west side of Austin. High tech industries in the area include enterprise software, semiconductors, corporate R&D, biotechnology, gaming, and a variety of startup companies.
Economy of Columbus, Ohio
Other medical operations in the area include the Fortune 500 company Cardinal Health, which has its headquarters in the Columbus suburb of Dublin (Cardinal was originally based in Columbus). The Ross Products Division of Abbott Laboratories, makers of Ensure nutritional drink and Similac infant formula, is headquartered in Columbus, with over 7,000 employees.Columbus has routinely been ranked No. 1 as the most up and coming technological city in America, aided by Battelle Memorial Institute, created in the 1920s by industrialist Gordon Battelle. Central Connecticut State University ranked Columbus No. 8 in the nation for Internet literacy in 2005, but by 2008 the city had slipped to No. 21. In 2009, Forbes ranked Columbus as the 29th most wired city in the country.
Columbus is home to the Ohio Supercomputer Center, founded in 1987, and located on the Ohio State University campus. It is available to research scientists, focusing on bio and data science, advanced materials, and engineering research. 1,850 miles of network infrastructure is utilized by the center through OARNet, providing internet access to over two million Ohioans as well as colleges and universities. The OSC partners with the U.S. Department of Defense, Education, and Energy, as well as the Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories, among other institutions.
Many technology companies either call Columbus home or have significant operations in the area. The first major commercial Internet service provider in the United States, CompuServe, still has its roots in Columbus, although it has been owned by AOL since 1998. They started in Columbus in 1969 and first offered Internet service in 1979 with electronic mail services. Chemical Abstracts Service is located just north of the OSU campus, and is the "world's foremost clearinghouse for chemical research".