British national weather service Met Office has awarded a three-year, $128m contract to Cray for deployment of its XC supercomputers and Sonexion storage systems for operational weather prediction and climate research.
Integrating XC40 systems as well as next-generation Cray XC systems with existing and future Intel Xeon processors, the new Cray supercomputers will boast 13 times more supercomputing power compared to the agency’s current systems.
Met Office chief executive Rob Varley said: "We are very excited about this investment in UK science.
"It will lead to a step change in weather forecasting and climate prediction, and give us the capability to strengthen our collaborations with partners in the South West, UK and around the world.
"The new Cray supercomputers, together with improved observations, science and modeling, will deliver better forecasts and advice to support UK business, the public and government. It will help make the UK more resilient to high impact weather and other environmental risks."
Cray president and CEO Peter Ungaro said: "The Met Office is both a pioneer and leader in weather and climate services, and we are excited that Cray supercomputers and storage solutions will assist them in achieving their important and complex mission of informing citizens and industry how the weather and climate will affect them now and in the future."
Cray XC40 supercomputers are integrated with Aries system interconnect; a Dragonfly network topology; DataWarp applications I/O accelerator technology; cooling systems; the next-generation Cray Linux Environment Cray’s HPC optimised programming environment.
The delivery of Cray Sonexion storage solution will occur in phases, bringing the overall storage capacity to 20pb when completely inastalled, which will operate at speeds of 1.5tbps of bandwidth.
Multiple system deliveries are under the contract will be executed between 2014 and 2017, while the major deliveries are anticipated between 2015 and 2017.
