U.S. Navy and The Weather Channel on SGI Origin 3800 supercomputerMountain View 06 June 2001 The U.S. Navy and The Weather Channel have signed a memorandum of understanding that encourages professional collaboration between these two important SGI customers. The agreement will allow the two organizations to jointly examine new methods and technologies for producing and presenting climate and weather forecasts.
Under the agreement, The Weather Channel will explore using climate,
weather and ocean data processed by the SGI Origin 3800 supercomputer
at the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC) in
Monterey, Calif. This 128-processor machine, one of the world's most
sophisticated tools for global weather and ocean modeling, utilizes the
largest existing real-time databases of oceanic and atmospheric observations.
The Weather Channel will have access to the Navy's Coupled
Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS), which is used to
predict changes in ocean and weather conditions in highly complex coastal
areas of the world. Such collaborations will ultimately benefit the
advancement of the science of weather prediction, ensuring that the
United States gets the greatest possible benefit from its investment in
weather and oceanography.
The agreement provides the Navy with a source of validation and feedback
from The Weather Channel for its weather and ocean model. In addition, the
Navy is exploring graphics used by The Weather Channel for the presentation of
meteorological data. The Weather Channel's forecasting system includes
two SGI Origin 2000 servers, seven Silicon Graphics Octane and
45 Silicon Graphics(R) O2(R) workstations running Weather Services
International WxPro software.
"The Weather Channel uses SGI visual workstations to process, store and
distribute weather imagery to cable systems throughout the United States,"
said Raymond Ban, executive vice president for meteorological affairs and
operations, The Weather Channel. "Thanks to SGI technology, The Weather
Channel is able to bring viewers the newest graphics and most accurate,
up-to-the-minute forecasts. SGI systems enable The Weather Channel to
broadcast local weather forecasts to millions of television households."
FNMOC continuously distributes mission-essential weather information to
its worldwide fleet and also exchanges information with civilian agencies such
as the National Weather Service.
Fleet Numerical is in the process of converting its operations from
Cray Inc. C90 technology to the SGI Origin 3000 server series based on
the highly scalable SGI NUMA modular computing architecture. A
512-processor SGI Origin 3800 system was delivered to Fleet Numerical on
May 21, 2001 to augment the 128-processor SGI Origin 3800 server and
128-processor SGI 2800 systems already resident at the center. Full
Operational Capability (FOC) of the 128-processor and 512-processor SGI Origin
3800 systems is planned for early fall 2001.
Following FOC, the 128-processor SGI 2800 server, which has been purchased
by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), will be kept physically in place but
shifted to full-time support of the Navy's R and D program in weather and ocean
prediction. This system will mirror Fleet Numerical's unclassified operational
database and serve as a significant tool for accelerating the development and
transition of new models and applications into operations at Fleet Numerical.
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