How GPUs Power the NORAD Santa Tracker

Santa Claus monitors children everywhere, watching to see who’s naughty and who’s nice. But someone has to keep an eye on Santa, too. NORAD diligently monitors North American skies year-round for missiles, planes and other airborne objects. On Christmas Eve that includes Saint Nick, whose sleigh it tracks from the moment it lifts off.

Headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, NORAD — the North American Aerospace Defense Command — tracks Santa using Cesium. The open-source WebGL globe and map engine maintained by Analytical Graphics is widely used for visualizing fast-changing data. The Exton, Pa., firm has worked with NORAD since 1997 on the effort. When paired with the latest internet browsers, WebGL can take advantage of powerful NVIDIA GPUs to render images based on NORAD’s real-time data in stunning detail.