IBM To Build World’s Most Powerful Weather SupercomputerSite Map –
Friday December 21, 7:00 am Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: IBM Corporation
IBM To Build World’s Most Powerful Weather Supercomputer
“Blue Storm” Computing And Storage Infrastructure To Significantly Improve
Forecasts
ARMONK, NY–(INTERNET WIRE)–Dec 21, 2001– IBM announced today that it has been
selected by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to
build the world’s most powerful supercomputer and storage network for weather
prediction, enabling meteorologists to offer new and much improved forecasts.
Dubbed “Blue Storm,” the IBM eServer p690-based system will provide the European
National Weather Services with advanced weather information that will enhance
activities ranging from the early warning of severe storms and floods to the
optimal routing of ships at sea to the planning of family picnics.
IBM will supply ECMWF with a computing infrastructure including a supercomputer
that is projected to be about five times more powerful than ECMWF’s current
systems, together with a data storage network of IBM storage servers and tape
systems as well as software that speeds the flow of data to and from the
supercomputer’s thousands of microprocessors.
ECMWF’s researchers will access Blue Storm via IBM IntelliStation workstations
running Linux, while researchers throughout Europe will access the system over a
wide-area network.
“Today’s highly sophisticated numerical models of the world’s atmosphere and
oceans require the most powerful supercomputing resources,” says Dr. David
Burridge, director of ECMWF. “In addition to supplying unmatched technology, we
are confident that IBM will be a trusted partner with the skills and experience
to help us overcome many of the challenges we face in predicting the global
weather.”
According to Dr. Burridge, Blue Storm will provide ECMWF with the unprecedented
level of computational power needed to make major advances in three strategic
areas:
– Exploitation of the wealth of information that will be provided
by an enhanced network of satellite observation systems. Blue
Storm will help scientists more accurately determine the
initial state of the atmosphere and oceans, thus significantly
improving the Centre’s forecasts.
– Representation of heating and cooling, cloud formation and
dissipation, rain, snow and other processes in the Centre’s
model of the global atmosphere; the model has 21 million grid
points distributed throughout the atmosphere between the
surface and a height of 65 km.
– Improvements of the techniques developed by the Centre, and
based on chaos theory, to estimate the uncertainty in the
forecasts and the probabilities of alternative developments
over the coming week, month and season. Improved advance
warning of severe weather events anywhere on the globe is a
specific aim of ECMWF’s strategy.
“ECMWF is renowned for developing new techniques that advance the science of
meteorology,” said Val Rahmani, general manager, IBM eServer pSeries, IBM Server
Group. “By pushing the boundaries of supercomputing power, IBM supplies the
organization’s scientists with the tools to realize some of their most ambitious
goals.”
IBM will provide ECMWF with:
– An IBM eServer [1] Cluster 1600 supercomputer built with
multiple IBM eServer p690 enterprise UNIX [2] servers. In 2002,
IBM will deliver a system capable of achieving seven teraflops,
or seven trillions of calculations per second. The
supercomputer will be expanded in stages and, when fully
installed in 2004, will achieve over 20 teraflops.
– IBM TotalStorage products, including: FAStT500 storage servers,
SAN fabric and IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3590
systems to store observational meteorological and oceanographic
data and forecast results.
– The High Performance Storage System (HPSS), advanced software
for data management in technical computing environments. HPSS
was developed in association with the world’s most advanced
supercomputing sites, including Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, home of IBM’s ASCI White, to provide a data stream
fast enough to match the processing speed of very large
supercomputers. HPSS is designed to move large data objects
across networks at high speed between supercomputers, disks,
and tape libraries.
ECMWF’s weather forecasts are essential to many business activities, such as
routing oil tankers and cargo ships at sea, as well as demand planning for
electric utilities and manufacturers. The organization supplies meteorological
information to national weather services, which issue warnings, present daily
television weather forecasts throughout Europe, and provide specialized services
to their many commercial and governmental users.
Today’s announcement highlights a powerful trend towards the use of IBM
supercomputers and storage systems to predict weather and climate changes. IBM
technology has recently been selected by the National Centers for Environmental
Prediction, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Naval
Oceanographic Office, the National Climactic Data Center, Germany’s Deutscher
Wetterdienst and other premier weather forecasting and climate modelling
organizations worldwide.
About ECMWF
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an
international organization supported by 22 European States. Its Member States
are Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the
Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Portugal, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Turkey and
the United Kingdom; the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Iceland and Slovenia
are Co-operating States.
The principal objectives of the Centre are the daily preparation of medium-range
weather forecasts up to 10 days ahead for distribution to the meteorological
services of the Member States; scientific and technical research directed to the
improvement of these forecasts; the development of an operational seasonal
forecasting capability; and the collection and storage of appropriate
meteorological data. ECMWF also makes supercomputing resources available to its
Member States for their own research.
[1] The IBM brand consists of the established IBM e-business logo with the
following descriptive term “server” following it.
[2] UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries,
licensed exclusively through X/Open Company, Limited.
Copyright2001 International Business Machines Corporation, all rights reserved.
IBM, the e-business logo and pSeries are trademarks of IBM Corporation in the
United States and/or other countries.
All other company, product and service names are trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective companies.
Contact:
John Buscemi
IBM
914-766-4495
jbuscemi@us.ibm.com
Austin Woods
ECMWF
011-44-118-949-9101
dra@ecmwf.int
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