With Silicon Graphics, Roshydromet Improves Accuracy and Speed of Weather Forecasts to Save Lives and Property

Russia‘s National Weather Service Boosts Computing Power by 10,000 Times to Model Weather and Climate in Greater Detail

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Around the world, efforts are intensifying to provide early and accurate warning of severe weather systems. In Russia, meteorologists are pursuing this potentially life-saving goal with world-class computing and storage solutions from Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (Nasdaq: SGIC).

Russia’s Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (Roshydromet) after a thorough evaluation and rigorous procurement procedure has deployed Silicon Graphics solutions to rapidly develop detailed models that enable more precise weather forecasts. The systems operate at 27 trillion operations per second, providing 10,000 times the computational power of Roshydromet’s previous Cray supercomputer. This enhanced capability has expanded both the forecast duration and the accuracy of these critical forecasts.

One system is equipped with 6.6 trillion bytes (TB) of globally shared memory, so Russian meteorologists can process much larger models and produce more accurate forecasts.

Installed in December, the new systems will help Roshydromet minimize the losses to life and property caused by severe weather. The Federal Service also expects to:

• Generate forecasts with much better accuracy and more details, as compared to the earlier forecasts.
• Extend the forecast duration from 5-7 days previously to 7-10 days.
• Offer a new variety of specialized weather forecasts to serve the needs of the growing economy of the Russian Federation. This is possible, because the new Silicon Graphics solution will allow Roshydromet to:
  • Generate global weather models with resolution of 40 kilometers (km) or better – nearly 4 times more detailed than previous models.
  • Reach the resolution of 15 kilometer for some regions and eventually produce forecasts for major cities that are accurate down to a 1.5-3 kilometer, enabling, for instance, specific districts within Moscow to receive their own forecasts.

With Russia covering more than one-eighth of the planet’s land area, forecasting weather nationwide presents a uniquely difficult challenge. Creating weather and climate models at a resolution of just 40 km requires massive compute resources and fast access to data. Yet strict power limitations at Roshydromet’s computer center meant that only the most energy-efficient solutions could be considered.

“We map the globe in our models, with denser resolution from the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait, Roshydromet forecasts weather in areas that include mountain ranges, steppes, forests and near desert,” said Vladimir Antsypovitch, director, Main Computer Center at Roshydromet. “With more detailed weather models, we can spare lives and communities from devastating weather threats. As the result of the selection procedure has shown, Silicon Graphics was the only vendor capable of delivering the performance, flexibility and reliability our applications require, along with the energy efficiency we needed to stay within our power constraints.”

“As weather systems grow more severe, developing and disseminating an accurate forecast quickly has become an economic and public safety imperative for governments around the world,” said Dr. Deepak Thakkar, director of marketing at Silicon Graphics. “With powerful, shared-memory solutions from Silicon Graphics, Roshydromet can rise to the challenge of providing 48-hour forecasts for the largest country in the world while meeting its very specific power constraints.”

“Forecasting severe weather for large, diverse geographies like Russia plays a vital role in a proactive public safety strategy. Intel is proud to power the energy-smart server solutions from SGI(R) that make this possible for Roshydromet,” said Richard Dracott, Intel’s General Manager of High Performance Computing. “The Intel Itanium(R) and Xeon(R) processors used in the SGI systems provide the scalability, reliability, and energy-efficient performance for these applications that are immense both in their scope and in their impact on people’s lives.”

Roshydromet’s Compute and Storage Solution:

• An 1,664-core SGI(R) Altix(R) 4700 system with 6.6TB of globally shared memory running SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server 10.
• A 1,408-core SGI(R) Altix(R) ICE system powered by 352 Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors and equipped with 2.8TB of memory and SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise.
• 180TB of SGI(R) RAID storage (a 60TB SGI(R) InfiniteStorage 4000 system and a 120TB SGI(R) InfiniteStorage 10000 array), with a Quantum tape library and Fibre Channel Storage Area Network utilizing SGI(R) InfiniteStorage Shared Filesystem CXFS(TM) and SGI(R) InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility software for seamless, transparent data transfer and hierarchical management.

Performance and Energy Efficiency:

• Silicon Graphics won the procurement at Roshydromet, because the Altix family’s unique architecture allows scientists to optimize their Global Spectral Model (GSM) atmospheric codes using “fat notes” driven by 128 or 256 processors, thus dramatically shortening their time to solution. Silicon Graphics storage with CXFS also means users can access data from any client.
• An inventive water-cooling solution developed by Silicon Graphics allows Roshydromet to keep energy consumption and costs to a minimum during the summer; in winter, the facility will utilize the cold outdoor weather to keep data center temperatures down.

Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC), is a leader in high-performance computing. SGI delivers a complete range of high-performance server and storage solutions along with industry-leading professional services and support that enable its customers to overcome the challenges of complex data-intensive workflows and accelerate breakthrough discoveries, innovation and information transformation. SGI solutions help customers solve their computing challenges whether it’s enhancing the quality of life through drug research, designing and manufacturing safer and more efficient cars and airplanes, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland security and defense, or helping enterprises manage large data. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and can be found on the Web at www.sgi.com.

(C) 2009 SGI. All rights reserved. SGI, the SGI cube, Altix and the SGI logo are registered trademarks of SGI in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. Intel, Xeon and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

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