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Supercomputer (The UK Met Office)
The Met Office in the UK, established in 1854, is one of the world's oldest weather forecasting agencies. The supercomputer adopted by this agency is NEC's SX-8 super-high-speed system.
Weather forecasting requires that data be gathered from observatories and weather stations on the ground as well as from airplanes in flight. In addition, atmospheric profiles and cloud images must be captured from space using satellites. All of this data then needs to be analyzed. The SX-8 was introduced as the most reliable supercomputer available to process these huge volumes of observation data and produce weather forecasts at high speeds.
The SX-8 is one of the world's largest and fastest supercomputers. With the capacity of 3,500 PCs, it is capable of conducting more than one trillion calculations per second. In addition to creating weather forecasts for use by the people of the UK, NEC's SX-8 has another important role: to host The Met Office Hadley Centre's climate models to help predict global warming ? one of the greatest global challenges we face.
