Supercomputer to reduce impact of severe weather events

15th January 2020

AMD

Alex Lynn

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AMD announced that its EPYC processors have been selected by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to accelerate its new supercomputer, based on Atos’s latest BullSequana XH2000 technology, for one of the most powerful meteorological supercomputers in the world.

Once operational in 2021, the supercomputer will allow ECMWF to run its predictions at a higher resolution, of around 10km, offering reliable, advanced numerical predictions about the occurrence and intensity of extreme weather events ahead of time.

“By leveraging our high-performance AMD EPYC server processors, the Atos supercomputer can enable significant improvements in weather forecasting, helping to increase the accuracy of weather predictions around the world,” said Forrest Norrod, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Data Center and Embedded Solutions Business Group. “The real-time data powered by AMD EPYC and delivered by the supercomputer at ECMWF has the potential to decrease the impact of severe weather events on peoples’ lives.”

The increase in ECMWF’s computing power, with the industry leading core count of the AMD EPYC 7742, will support hundreds of researchers from over 30 countries across Europe in their work on medium and long-range weather forecasting.

Sophie Proust, Atos Group CTO, said: “We’re really delighted to have been selected by ECMWF for this major contract. This is testament not only to our solid expertise and operational excellence needed to install, manage and run such a large system, but also to the best-of-breed technology which we are supplying, with our BullSequana XH2000 and our partners AMD, Mellanox and DDN.

“This new solution will optimise ECMWF's current workflow to enable it to deliver vastly improved numerical weather predictions. Most importantly though, this is a long-term collaboration, one in which we will work closely with ECMWF to explore new technologies in order to be prepared for next-generation applications.”

Based in Reading in the UK, ECMWF is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by 34 Member and Co-operating States across Europe and holds the largest archive of numerical weather prediction data in the world. The system will be delivered and installed at the ECMWF data centre in Bologna, Italy in 2020, with service commencing in 2021. Atos will work locally with E4 Computer Engineering to manage, run and maintain the system.