NEC today announced that it has delivered the world’s most powerful vector supercomputer, the NEC SX-9, to the Czech Hydrometeorological Service.  From early 2010, the Czech Meteorological Service (CHMI) will run its operational forecast on the NEC SX-9.

The NEC SX-9 will enable Czech Meteo to obtain accurate numerical weather prediction and to issue better storm warnings.

Weather prediction models are increasingly complex; rainfall, temperature and related variables have to be calculated precisely several days in advance. 

At the same time regional peculiarities need consideration.  In addition, the public must be made aware quickly of predictions of severe weather events.

NEC puts powerful SX-9 into operation at CHMI

The NEC SX-9 is currently the world's most powerful vector supercomputer with a peak performance of over 100 GFLOPS per CPU with 64-bit precision.  It has a high-memory bandwidth of four terabytes/s.

The NEC SX-9’s peak performance is 1.6 teraflops with 1 terabyte of main memory.  Once roll-out is complete, it will provide the CHMI with a system twice as large as its initial one.  For the pre-and post-processing stages, two NEC Express 5800R140a-4 4-socket Enterprise Server will be deployed.

This will provide users with seamless access to the common global file system (NEC gStorageFS), which has a capacity of more than 100 terabytes. The installation and technical support is done in collaboration with Bull.

Numerical Weather Predictions models need Supercomputers

NEC has a long-term track record in climate research and weather forecasting.  It has led the market in vector supercomputers for 10 years.

“With the use of the new NEC computer, CHMI will double the spatial resolution of the operational model and use new configurations treating explicitly big precipitating systems and implicitly smaller ones without any gap between both. Variational data assimilation shall be introduced in order to obtain a better instantaneous picture of the atmospheric circulation at the beginning of any model integration. Thanks to its powerful NEC-SX9 supercomputer CHMI will continue developing ambitious future model versions”, said Dr. Thomas Schoenemeyer, Senior Solution Manager at NEC Deutschland. 

Early floods warning matters

In addition to exact weather forecasting, CHMI’s wants to improve its flood warnings.

Dr. Radmila Brozkova, head of the numerical weather forecast department of CHMI said, “Floods are among the most hazardous weather phenomena and they are very difficult to predict.  With the new supercomputer supplied by NEC, we can closely collaborate with other Central European countries to further strengthen and fulfill our national mission to protect the Czech population."

The NEC supercomputer is used in a project called 3MP, which is partly financed by the European Community. It was launched in order to modernize the measurement, modeling and forecasting system of the Czech flood forecasting service.  (3MP = Modernization of Measurement, Modelling and Prediction system of the Czech Republic flood forecast service).

Continuous cooperation between CHMI, Meteo France and NEC

For many years CHMI has worked actively in the ALADIN consortium, a European Project on Numerical Weather Prediction together with partners such as Meteo-France. The French weather forecast agency uses a cluster of powerful SX-9 supercomputers. CHMI will exchange expertise with local developers at Meteo-France and benefit from the support of the application engineers from NEC, who are continuously involved in optimizing the shared code to the SX-9 vector architecture.

The official inauguration of the NEC-SX9 System including “press conference afternoon” will take place on 26^th January 2010.

About Czech Hydrometeorological Institute

The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute is a central State institute of the Czech Republic in the fields of air quality, hydrology, water quality, climatology, and meteorology. It was  established in 1919 as National Meteorological Institute. The present-day organization of the Institute is based on three independent but interoperating disciplines covered by the meteorological, hydrological and atmospheric quality protection departments. The Institute is controlled by the Environment Ministry of the Czech Republic and its main task is to establish and operate monitoring stations, create and maintain data bases of observation data and provide forecasts and warnings. www.chmi.cz