NOAA Upgrades Supercomputers

[Jeff Snyder]

I ran across this story on the NOAA website:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2387.htm

(Well, I originally ran across it on CNN at http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/02/10/weather...r.ap/index.html , but followed through to the NOAA article).

At any rate, I was wondering what improvements we'll see in terms of operational model delivery time (e.g. NAM runtimes, etc.). The article notes an improvement to make room for better physics, etc, to be included in numerical models, which I understand as preparing for the operational use of WRF model runs... Anyone have more specs on this?

 

[Glen Romine]

I guess it depends on which products you are hoping to see. The ETA looks to finish about 20 minutes sooner than last April, so not a big improvement there. You can check the expected completion time (and actual) of your favorite NCEP product here:

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/pr...stat/index.html

I would guess they are using the extra computing power to run more parallel jobs rather than finish particular components much faster. The old systems were being run at near 100% capacity, which left no room for problems, such as a compute node going bad. The new system should have improved reliability.

Glen

 

[Craig Maire II]

Supercomputers

Sounds like these computers are going to be much more powerful than the old ones! 1.3 trillion calculations per second!! Wonder how this will help with tornado and severe storm forecasting?? :shock: