The US Navy has awarded Silicon Graphics Inc an $18m contract for next-generation supercomputers to be used for weather forecasting. SGI competed against IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc to win the contract tendered by the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center project. Initially, SGI will install a 128 processor Origin2000 system, but by 2001 it will have been upgraded to a 512 processor SN supercomputer, set to provide a 33 times performance boost over the current SGI machine.
The Navy has been using its existing system as a backup for the National Weather Service’s computers, which were down on Monday and which were down on occasion during Hurricane Dennis. The Navy says its systems have played a key role in forecasting for both Dennis and Hurricane Floyd. But with the next-generation machine, warnings should be ready up to five hours earlier, potentially giving more time for preparation and evacuation. The Fleet Numerical system, based in Monterey, California, will be capable of running the Center’s global suite of atmospheric and ocean models twice a day.
The first SN replacements for the current Origin line, running SGI’s Irix operating system and using the MIPS chip, are scheduled to ship some time next year.
