The nation’s newest supercomputers were officially unveiled by the US government’s weather forecast and climate monitoring agency on Tuesday. These systems will produce improved forecasts and warnings to help national security and the economy.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) first announced the new supercomputers in February 2020. They significantly increase the processing power, storage space, and interconnect speed of the US Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System.
“More computing power will enable NOAA to provide the public with more detailed weather forecasts further in advance,” said the agency’s administrator, Dr. Rick Spinrad.
A larger number of individual model simulations will be used by NOAA to more accurately quantify model uncertainty, higher-resolution models will be used to encapsulate fine details like severe thunderstorms, and more reasonable model physics will be used to better capture cloud and weather patterns formation.
Three times quicker than NOAA’s previous system, the twin Hewlett Packard Enterprise Cray supercomputers Dogwood and Cactus both run at a speed of 12.1 petaflops.
The supercomputing power supporting NOAA’s new operational prediction and research are now 42 petaflops when combined with the organization’s research and development supercomputers in West Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Colorado.
The two computers, Dogwood and Cactus, are currently classified as the 49th and 50th speediest computers in the world by TOP500, according to General Dynamics Information Technology, which won the contract for the machines.
To read our blog on “With AMD-powered Frontier, US replaces Japan as the leader on Top500 supercomputer list,” click here.