Simulating the world’s climate...
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Sir Ulli
Grand Admiral Special
Simulating the world’s climate used to be the exclusive preserve of the supercomputer – not any more
Are you a bit embarrassed by your home PC? Isn’t it just a little, well, over specified? Recent years have seen a remarkable advance in the capabilities of the basic PC. MHz processors have given way to GHz devices, system memories routinely exceed 500MB, and the once unimaginable storage capacity of the 80GB hard drive is now reserved purely for entry-level models. Much of this is wasted on the typical home user, whose basic requirements – email, web browsing, a bit of domestic admin and the occasional PC game (just for the children of course) – have barely changed since the heady days when a 66MHz Pentium 1 was state of the art.
The games are, admittedly, the exception, but even the most avid games player has to eat and sleep now and again, with the net result that most home PCs are unused for a good deal of the time, and even when they are in use their capabilities are rarely tested to the limit. A better example of using a technological sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut it would be hard to imagine. If this sounds like your home installation, don’t worry; help is at hand.
In January this year the UK’s national meteorological service (the Met Office) took delivery of the world’s first production model SX-8 supercomputer from NEC. Operating together with the Met Office’s two previously installed SX-6 systems the new machine will provide 13 times the sustained performance of the earlier generation of Cray T3E massively parallel supercomputers, which entered service with the Met Office in 1997. It sounds impressive, but it isn’t enough. Routine requirements for computer-based weather forecasts of ever greater accuracy, combined with the huge technical challenge of modelling the effects of global warming over time intervals measured in decades, mean that, in practice, the Met Office has a virtually open-ended demand for computing power.
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Full Story
http://www.iee.org/oncomms/sector/PN_Article.cfm?objectID=3D100A5C-BC75-D279-D8D15A49EC4131B4
mfg
Sir Ulli
Are you a bit embarrassed by your home PC? Isn’t it just a little, well, over specified? Recent years have seen a remarkable advance in the capabilities of the basic PC. MHz processors have given way to GHz devices, system memories routinely exceed 500MB, and the once unimaginable storage capacity of the 80GB hard drive is now reserved purely for entry-level models. Much of this is wasted on the typical home user, whose basic requirements – email, web browsing, a bit of domestic admin and the occasional PC game (just for the children of course) – have barely changed since the heady days when a 66MHz Pentium 1 was state of the art.
The games are, admittedly, the exception, but even the most avid games player has to eat and sleep now and again, with the net result that most home PCs are unused for a good deal of the time, and even when they are in use their capabilities are rarely tested to the limit. A better example of using a technological sledgehammer to crack the proverbial nut it would be hard to imagine. If this sounds like your home installation, don’t worry; help is at hand.
In January this year the UK’s national meteorological service (the Met Office) took delivery of the world’s first production model SX-8 supercomputer from NEC. Operating together with the Met Office’s two previously installed SX-6 systems the new machine will provide 13 times the sustained performance of the earlier generation of Cray T3E massively parallel supercomputers, which entered service with the Met Office in 1997. It sounds impressive, but it isn’t enough. Routine requirements for computer-based weather forecasts of ever greater accuracy, combined with the huge technical challenge of modelling the effects of global warming over time intervals measured in decades, mean that, in practice, the Met Office has a virtually open-ended demand for computing power.
...
Full Story
http://www.iee.org/oncomms/sector/PN_Article.cfm?objectID=3D100A5C-BC75-D279-D8D15A49EC4131B4
mfg
Sir Ulli
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