A lot depends on the weather, and apparently during the Olympics it is a particularly necessary to be on the ball. The 2008 Olympic Summer Games are to be hosted in China and so the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has wasted no time in purchasing an IBM supercomputer to keep everyone in the know. The IBM p575 computer will provide 10 times the computational power of the bureau's current weather forecasting system. After the Games, the 80-node supercomputer will be used to improve the accuracy of forecasts in the areas around Beijing and to help predict air quality in the city. With a peak performance of 9.8 teraflops, the system is capable of sweeping up to 17,000 square miles to provide hourly numerical weather forecasts for each square mile.
News source: Physorg
9 Comments - Add comment