NCAR and the community it serves currently enjoy world leadership in several areas of atmospheric sciences research that depend on high-performance computing. In order to maintain this leadership, NCAR must have computing capabilities that are comparable to peer organizations throughout the world.
The most powerful computer NCAR has today is the CRAY C90/16. NCAR will soon install a 128-processor Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) microprocessor system. Neither of these systems will sustain more than 5 gigaflops on a single application.
However, NCAR's peer centers in Australia, Canada, England, and elsewhere are installing systems that by January '98 will sustain from 20-100 gigaflops on a single application. With these systems, they can -- and they are -- conducting research that is far beyond the ability of their U.S. counterparts.
In a report submitted to the National Research Council on 16 December 1997, SCD director Bill Buzbee summarized the computing capabilities of various forecast and climate modeling centers around the world and discussed their future plans. He also summarized computing capability at various universities in Japan and Europe and discussed the impact on U.S. atmospheric science.
Overall, the paper shows that earth systems modelers outside the U.S. have a substantial computational advantage over their U.S. colleagues and are likely to enjoy such for several years.
The full text of the paper is available
here.
