New Linux Supercomputer Forecasts Rain

buzzcutbuddha writes "Linux PR has a press release about a new weather forecasting supercomputer running Linux built by High Performance Technologies, Inc. that will be unveiled on Wednesday by NOAA. There is even a phone number to call to tour the High Performance Computer Center. " (let's see if the trolls can be clever for a change ;) Anyhoo 276 nodes, but its costed $15M? Them must be some spendy nodes...

Comments

$15M price tags.

[Ho-Lee-Cow!]

Just because the machine runs Linux, doesn't mean that there is a free software solution to predict the weather. Let's be a tiny bit realistic about it: they built a BIG box, put a 'free' OS on it, and then had someone write unique, custom software for it. You and I aren't going to get our hands on this weather package anytime soon ;).

By the time you count up the costs of that contract, I can readily see $15M. In fact, that figure is probably cheaper than if they had used, say, NT. Besides, absolutely nothing with the Government is 'free': defeats the the whole idea of pork barrel :)

High cost? Probably not, actually.

[The Dodger]

Anyhoo 276 nodes, but its costed $15M?

$54k/node does appear rather expensive at first glance, but let's bear in mind here that this is a HPC installation. That's "high performance", kids. Also, let's remember what it's purpose is: to "help researchers improve forecasts of severe weather such as thunderstorms, tornadoes,and winter storms, and ultimately, to save lives and property".

Basically, this ain't a couple of 386's Beowulf'd together over 10BaseT in someone's bedroom and you can bet that this system ain't going to be using EIDE hard drives. In order to achieve the peformance, reliability and scalability which the NOAA would have specified for such a mission-critical syste, it doesn't surprise me that the cost per node is this high.

Furthermore, this amount undoubtedly includes the two upgrades and maintenance over the contract period (three years plus)and that good old 24/7 4-hour response don't come cheap!

All in all, I'd say that it's probably not that expensive after all.

D.

Why it cost $15 million

[Greg Lindahl]

This contract includes 2 substantial upgrades; this is just the initial installation. The AlphaLinux cluster (yes, connected with Myrinet) is most of the initial equipment. There's also a tape robot from ADIC with 70 terabytes of tape (1400 tapes) and 20 tape drives, and a storage area network (SAN) using CVFS, a SAN filesystem being ported to Linux because of this contract.

The main software used on the system is actually all free: Linux, the PBS batch queue system, mpich as modified by Myricom for MPI, and the SMS scalable modeling system, developed at FSL. FSL has demonstrated some of their software scaling efficiently up to around 100 nodes. Limits in scalablility, the Alpha's superior floating point performance, and Compaq's great AlphaLinux compilers are the reason we used Alphas.

The truth about weather predicition

[ian.layton]

First let's me qualify myself...I was a meteorology major for a few years back in the mid 90's. With that said:

There is very little chance in the foreseeable future that weather predicition will be 100% correct, no matter how fast the computer get

One of my faviorite quotes along this line:

Why is Forecasting so difficult?

Consider a rotating spherical envelope of a mixture of gases -- occasionally murky and always somewhat viscous.

Place it around an astonomical object nearly 8000 miles in diameter.

Tilt the whole system back and forth with respect ot its source of heat and light.

Freeze it at the poles of its axis of roation and intensely heat it in the middle.

Cover most of the surface of the sphere with a liquid that continually feeds moisture into the atmosphere.

Subject the whole to tidal forces induced by the sun and a captive satellite.

Then try to predict the conditions of one small portion of that atmosphere for a period of one to several days in advance.

This quote came from a government manual for the NWS. This quote doesn't even touch the lack of quality observations in the atmosphere along with the unkown physics involved with it all.

Yes...it has been improving over the years. Going into the 80's, the hits were generally 75% for 24 hours out, 50% for 3 days out, and just above a crap shot for beyond that. Going into the 21st centruy, it's generally running about 90% for 24 hours, 75% for 3 days, and 50% for 5 days.

Even after studying it for years, I'm still amazed that they can get it to nearly 90% for 24 hours off.

Congrats if you made it this far.

Ian Layton