The new KNMI supercomputer will be used weather forecasting and climate research

De Bilt 29 October 2001 As reported earlier in Primeur in the article "Dutch Weather Institute buys SUN Fire super", the Royal Dutch Wheather Institute KNMI acquired one of the first new SUN Fire 15K supercomputers. The machine will get 84 processors. Primeur did ask Mart de Ras and René van Lier from the KNMI to provide a little more background of this acquisition

1. Can you explain the acquisition process? What were the different phases, what were the decision criteria, etc.

The acquisition of supercomputer facilities at KNMI has been executed according EU directives. An Invitation To Tender (ITT) has been published in January 2001. The specification phase started much earlier, September 2000. After receiving several offers of the major supercomputer suppliers, KNMI selected four of them and put them on a shortlist for further selection. Main objective of the ITT was to procure computing facilities for weather forecasting and climate research. In order to make a proper selection the ITT was based upon a set of benchmarks. They defined the minimum performance level required. The final decision is made in August 2001. All the work is done by a group of people representing future users and system administrators of the supercomputer facilities.

2. A lot of weather and climate research, especially in Europe, is done on vector computers. Did you do any bench marks comparing the vector and pure parallel approach?

KNMI was looking for the best performance/costs ratio. Although the weather-forecasting model runs well on vector architecture, it has been no issue as long as the required performance can be obtained.

3. Can you tell more about how this machine fits in the overall KNMI computing infrastructure.

KNMI?s infrastructure is based on the idea of service levels. Such as there are desktop, data-storage, communication and compute facilities. The selected system fits well in this environment of independent modular components. The new system is based on the same architecture as is currently used for weather and climate prediction.

4. Will this machine be used in "The Grid" projects in the Netherlands or on a broader scale.

There are no direct plans to incorporate the new machine in "The Grid" projects in The Netherlands. Future use in "The Grid" or on a broader scale is under investigation.

5. Can you explain a little bit more the Hirlam model that you will use. What other applications will run on the machine.

The machine will be used in mixed environment of weather forecasting, model development and climate research. Primarily the machine is set up in such a way that weather forecasting gets the required resources needed at any time of the day. The remaining resources are distributed amongst model development and several climate research topics. This is done in a fair-share manner by means of a resource scheduler tool. The machine is used in a single system image mode. So there is no hardware partitioning used to obtain the desired usage of the system.

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