Cray has signed a multi-year, multi-phase contract, valued at more than $40m, to provide the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) with a next-generation supercomputer. The installation will provide KMA with the necessary supercomputing, storage and data management technologies to reinforce its position as a premier weather forecasting and research centre.
Based in Seoul, South Korea, KMA's mission is operational weather forecasting and climate research for the benefit and welfare of the Korean public and industry. KMA will use Cray's scalable, massively parallel processing (MPP) supercomputers to provide more accurate regional and global numerical model forecasts through increased model resolution, increased ensemble sizes and the implementation of advanced data assimilation.
'We are quite proud that KMA has once again turned to Cray to provide the necessary supercomputing capabilities to meet the demanding requirements of weather forecasting and climate research, which are important segments for our business,' said Peter Ungaro, Cray president and CEO. 'Once completed, the Cray supercomputer at KMA will be the largest integrated solution for operational numerical weather prediction in the Asia Pacific region and one of the largest in the world – another strong proof point for not only our current Cray XT5 supercomputer, but also future systems we are in the process of developing and will be delivering as part of this contract. We are honoured to be able to help KMA scientists and researchers provide more detailed and accurate numerical weather predictions in support of their mission of identifying the potential of severe weather systems in a more timely fashion.'
Cray was awarded the multi-year contract based on the superior delivered application performance and a robust total solution to KMA's demanding operational requirement. Once completed, the Cray system will feature a peak performance in excess of 600 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second) and a multi-tiered, multi-petabyte storage, archival and back-up system. The Cray system will be delivered in two phases, with acceptance of both expected during the second half of 2010.
Cray will also provide service and support, including applications support for KMA's operational and research weather and climate models. Additionally, Cray and KMA will continue to expand the successful Earth System Research Center (ESRC), which is a cooperative venture established in 2005 to advance the science of earth system modeling over the East-Asia Pacific region and to use the collective knowledge of academia, government and industry by promoting collaboration across these communities.
