TheEuropean Centre
for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts(ECMWF) is
aiming to improve its weather information with the help of
upgradedIBM supercomputers.
The Reading-based international organisation, supported by 30
countries, has signed a deal to replace the High Performance
Computing Facility at its centre from 2009 onwards.
IBM will provide two Power6 clusters during 2008, each with a
potential peak performance of about 145 TFlops (1012 floating point
operations per second).
These clusters would currently be placed in the top 10 computers
in terms of performance in the world. In 2011, IBM will replace
these clusters with future Power systems.
Isabella Weger, head of the computing division at ECMWF, said,
"The new computer system will help ECMWF to further improve its
global numerical weather prediction models.
"In particular, it will increase the resolution of the forecast
system, and by making the best use of satellite data, it will
enable us to provide useful information for early warnings of
severe weather events."