NOAA National Weather Service activates new IBM supercomputerArmonk 06 June 2003 The US National Weather Service (NOAA) has activated its weather-forecasting supercomputer, a massive machine with IBM eServer and storage systems that will extend the government's ability to forecast hurricanes from three days to five days in advance. Making its debut as hurricane season 2003 begins, the machine is expected to give businesses, government agencies and citizens crucial extra time to prepare for the violent storms.
This announcement marks the first phase of a contract that is expected to generate more than $200 million for IBM during the next nine years. When fully deployed, the system will be about four times faster than the most powerful supercomputer in the world today.
In addition to its sheer size, the machine is notable for pioneering a new way of supplying deep computing power. The system is located at IBM's e-business Hosting Center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with processing power and storage capability delivered to the government via an ultra-fast network.
The weather forecasts produced by the National Weather Service's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) form the basis of television and newspaper forecasts across the country. The forecasts are also used in aviation, agriculture, disaster response and a host of other important areas.
The supercomputer will be delivered in stages. The first phase, a cluster of 44 IBM eServer p690 servers supported by 42 terabytes of IBM TotalStorage FAStT500 Storage Server disk storage, doubles the current computing power for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service.
IBM will expand the system to reach a peak speed well in excess of 100 teraflops by 2009. It would take one person with a calculator more than 80 million years to tabulate the number of calculations a 100 teraflop supercomputer can handle in a single second.
Supercomputers have traditionally been located at customer sites. IBM's flexible hosting service enables customers to reap the benefits of powerful supercomputers via a high speed connection, without having to provide the physical space to house the computer.
IBM has provided large weather/climate research supercomputers to the world's most prestigious meteorological organisations, including NCEP, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Naval Oceanographic Office, National Center for Atmospheric Research, German Meteorological Office, and Hungarian National Meteorological Service.
In the most recent TOP500 List of Supercomputers, published twice each year by supercomputing experts Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee and Erich Strohmaier and Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany, IBM systems processed a combined 93 Tflop/s, more than the machines of any other vendor.
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