Meteorological Service Singapore advances weather forecasting with new supercomputer from Hewlett Packard Enterprise

The new super­com­pu­ter will speed up wea­ther pre­dic­tions and bols­ter cli­ma­te rese­arch into Singapore’s tro­pi­cal cli­ma­te trends with up to 2X more per­for­mance and advan­ced mode­ling and simu­la­ti­on capabilities

HOUSTON, Oct. 26, 2022 – Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se (NYSE: HPE) today announ­ced that it has built a new super­com­pu­ter for the Meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal Ser­vice Sin­ga­po­re (MSS) to advan­ce wea­ther fore­cas­ting and tro­pi­cal cli­ma­te rese­arch for Sin­ga­po­re and the broa­der Sou­the­ast Asia regi­on. The new super­com­pu­ter replaces MSS’ exis­ting sys­tem, deli­ve­ring near­ly twice as much per­for­mance and advan­ced capa­bi­li­ties across com­pu­te, sto­rage, soft­ware and networking.

As cli­ma­te mode­ling beco­mes incre­asing­ly com­plex due to new sea­so­nal pat­terns, it requi­res fas­ter, more sophisti­ca­ted super­com­pu­ting capa­bi­li­ties. HPE’s super­com­pu­ting solu­ti­ons acce­le­ra­te wea­ther fore­cas­ting across the glo­be to pro­vi­de real-time ana­ly­sis by deli­ve­ring signi­fi­cant com­pu­ta­tio­nal per­for­mance and end-to-end capa­bi­li­ties to model and simu­la­te cli­ma­te data.

The enhan­ced super­com­pu­ting power will help increase fore­cast skills through impro­ved nume­ri­cal model con­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons and advan­ced data assi­mi­la­ti­on of ground-and space-based wea­ther obser­va­tions in MSS’ nume­ri­cal wea­ther pre­dic­tion sys­tem cal­led ‘SINGV’. SINGV was deve­lo­ped by MSS’ Cent­re for Cli­ma­te Rese­arch Sin­ga­po­re (CCRS) through col­la­bo­ra­ti­ons with UK Met Office and part­ners, and con­fi­gu­red spe­ci­fi­cal­ly for wea­ther fore­casts and cli­ma­te appli­ca­ti­ons in Sin­ga­po­re and the near­by region. 

Addi­tio­nal­ly, the super­com­pu­ter will enable the use of modern fore­cast postpro­ces­sing algo­rith­ms, using machi­ne lear­ning tech­ni­ques, to impro­ve the qua­li­ty of fore­casts. The enhan­ced com­pu­ta­tio­nal power will also allow the fur­ther deve­lo­p­ment of the fol­lo­wing high-reso­lu­ti­on models to deli­ver impro­ved wea­ther and cli­ma­te products:
 

  • Sub-kilo­me­ter sca­le urban mode­ling (uSINGV), which is being deve­lo­ped to repre­sent the urban envi­ron­ment more appro­pria­te­ly in wea­ther and cli­ma­te appli­ca­ti­ons 
  • Cou­pled oce­an-atmo­sphe­re-land-wave mode­ling sys­tem (cSINGV) to cap­tu­re and impro­ve the under­stan­ding of the strong feed­backs bet­ween the atmo­sphe­re, land and oce­an, which have a signi­fi­cant impact on the wea­ther and cli­ma­te over the Sou­the­ast Asia region

 

Sin­ga­po­re con­ti­nues to dri­ve its natio­nal initia­ti­ves with super­com­pu­ting pro­jects that signi­fi­cant­ly con­tri­bu­te to sci­ence, acce­le­ra­te inno­va­ti­on and impro­ve a ran­ge of are­as for the grea­ter good of its citi­zens,” said Trish Dam­kro­ger, Chief Pro­duct Offi­cer and seni­or vice pre­si­dent, HPC, AI, & Labs at HPE. “We are hono­red to play a role in the nation’s digi­tal agen­da and be sel­ec­ted by the Meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal Ser­vice Sin­ga­po­re to build them a powerful sys­tem with advan­ced, end-to-end super­com­pu­ting tech­no­lo­gies that will fuel Singapore’s wea­ther intel­li­gence and speed up pre­dic­tions of extre­me cli­ma­te events.”

The MSS, which is part of Singapore’s Natio­nal Envi­ron­ment Agen­cy (NEA), is dedi­ca­ted to pro­vi­ding the nati­on with time­ly wea­ther fore­casts, insights into Singapore’s tro­pi­cal cli­ma­te, and bet­ter under­stan­ding of event pat­terns in mon­so­ons, heat­wa­ves and air pol­lu­ti­on. To advan­ce MSS’ mis­si­on, the new super­com­pu­ter, which will be built using the HPE Cray super­com­pu­ter to deli­ver powerful, end-to-end per­for­mance and capa­bi­li­ties, will impro­ve mode­ling and simu­la­ti­on of com­plex wea­ther data to pro­vi­de more accu­ra­te, real-time wea­ther fore­casts and war­nings to citizens.

At CCRS, our sci­en­tists and soft­ware engi­neers are com­mit­ted to deve­lo­ping advan­ced mode­ling sys­tems and exami­ning com­plex data to pro­vi­de time­ly wea­ther fore­casts for our nati­on, which due to the island’s uni­que geo­lo­gi­cal posi­tio­ning, often expe­ri­en­ces various of wea­ther pro­ces­ses on a dai­ly basis,” said Prof. Dale Bar­ker, Direc­tor (CCRS). “After col­la­bo­ra­ting with Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se to design the new super­com­pu­ter, our rese­arch cen­ter will gain a fas­ter sys­tem with next-gene­ra­ti­on tech­no­lo­gies to advan­ce mode­ling and simu­la­ti­on tools, while intro­du­cing new capa­bi­li­ties to test and app­ly future types of appli­ca­ti­ons for deeper rese­arch methodologies.”

Sin­ga­po­re boosts natio­nal wea­ther and cli­ma­te intel­li­gence with next-gene­ra­ti­on supercomputer

MSS is gai­ning near­ly 2X more per­for­mance, with a peak per­for­mance 401.4 tera­flops, using the fol­lo­wing set of new tech­no­lo­gies span­ning com­pu­te, net­wor­king, sto­rage and software:
 

Addi­tio­nal­ly, as with MSS’ pre­vious Cray-based super­com­pu­ter, the new sys­tem will con­ti­nue to use Alta­ir® PBS Pro­fes­sio­nal®, one of the industry’s lea­ding job sche­du­ling and workload mana­ger solu­ti­ons to effi­ci­ent­ly sca­le and opti­mi­ze various mode­ling, simu­la­ti­on and AI workloads.

The super­com­pu­ter is hos­ted at the CCRS’s Data Centre.

To learn more about CCRS’ rese­arch efforts that the new super­com­pu­ter will sup­port, plea­se visit: http://ccrs.weather.gov.sg/

About Hew­lett Packard Enterprise

Hew­lett Packard Enter­pri­se (NYSE: HPE) is the glo­bal edge-to-cloud com­pa­ny that helps orga­niza­ti­ons acce­le­ra­te out­co­mes by unlo­cking value from all of their data, ever­y­whe­re. Built on deca­des of reim­agi­ning the future and inno­vat­ing to advan­ce the way peo­p­le live and work, HPE deli­vers uni­que, open and intel­li­gent tech­no­lo­gy solu­ti­ons as a ser­vice.  With offe­rings span­ning Cloud Ser­vices, Com­pu­te, High Per­for­mance Com­pu­ting & AI, Intel­li­gent Edge, Soft­ware, and Sto­rage, HPE pro­vi­des a con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence across all clouds and edges, hel­ping cus­to­mers deve­lop new busi­ness models, enga­ge in new ways, and increase ope­ra­tio­nal per­for­mance. For more infor­ma­ti­on, visit: www.hpe.com

Media Contact:
Tel­jya Oka-Pregel
Teljya.oka-pregel@hpe.com</a

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