High performance computing system at RosHydroMet

Installation of a new high performance computing system has been completed at RosHydroMet. The system is one of Russia’s most powerful supercomputers and will enable the weather service to provide much more detailed area coverage, more accurate and timely forecasts. The project was implemented under the National Hydromet Modernization programme. The project of building the computing system was carried out by IBS. The project budget totalled approx. $25 million.

All computing hardware was installed at the Main Computer Centre of RosHydroMet in Moscow and the regional centres in Novosibirsk and Khabarovsk. The supercomputer of the RosHydroMet Main Computer Centre consists of two computing systems having the overall peak performance of 27 TFlops. This is

• Russia’s biggest system having the SGI Altix 4700 common shared memory (1664 processor cores of Intel Itanium2 9140Ì processor chips, 6.6 TB RAM), with 11 TFlops performance,
• SGI Altix ICE cluster system (1408 Intel Xeon å5440 processor cores, 2.8 TB RAM), with 16 TFlops performance.

The new supercomputer, ranked sixth among Russia’s top 10 supercomputers, has performance that is 10,000 times higher than that of the previous supercomputer used by RosHydroMet. It will substantially enhance the capabilities of meteorologists in fundamental and applied aspects of weather forecasting and climate change modelling. New forecasting techniques based on supercomputer calculations will improve the accuracy and quality of forecasts required to provide better warning of adverse and dangerous weather conditions and reduce the threat to human life and damage to the national economy from natural disasters.

“Given the vast diversity of climate and weather conditions across Russia, a large number of industries and especially energy and utilities, transport services, civil engineering and agriculture rely on the quality and timeliness of weather forecasts. I should note that forecasts provide economic benefits that are many times greater than the cost of producing forecasts. Capability to forecast hurricanes, whirlwinds, hail, floods and other dangerous weather conditions is the only key to prevent economic damage and possible loss of human life. And this is the core mission of meteorologists. The new supercomputer is just a tool, but it is an essential tool. Quality of forecasts can only be provided by professional meteorologists employing state-of-the-art forecasting facilities including computer technologies,” commented Alexander Bedritsky, Head of RosHydroMet.