Japan: supercomputer will be launched to predict storms for 12 hours ahead

In Japan will be launched a new supercomputer for forecasting powerful and destructive storms. This decision was made after the Japanese government instructed the Japanese meteorological agency (JMA) to create a system of more efficient forecasting of storms so that the population and enterprises have more time to respond.

The need for a forecast is caused by the zealous stripes of rain over the past few years, which have become stronger and more destructive. The linear lanes of rain (rainBand, precipitation strips) are slowly moving or almost stationary heap -removal clouds that remain over the same area for several hours, often spilling strong rains that they gathered and causing landslides and floods. The idea of ​​experts is to provide a forecast of such events 6-12 hours earlier than they occur.

Using the Fugaku supercomputer, the researchers from the JMA and the Riken HPC Research Institute have been working on a model that can predict the formation and duration of linear lanes since June 2022. The new supercomputer operates on the Fujitsu A64FX processor for high -performance calculations and is based on the Fujitsu PrimeHPC FX1000 supercomputers line.

The peak theoretical performance of the system, which has not yet been called, will be 31.1 petaflops and will consist of 24 racks of PrimeHPC FX1000 systems. This system will begin to operate on March 1 and has a parallel file system of 42.3 petabytes.

The Fugaku system is more than 400 strokes of the server nodes Fujitsu A64FX and has a peak theoretical performance of 537 petaflops (with double accuracy with a floating -combat -ap). It is important to note that the computing nodes of the A64FX that have one processor are equipped with 32 GB of memory of HBM2, which provides memory capacity 1 TB/s, which radically increases the performance of calculations – provided that the data fit in 32 GB of memory.

The new system of 24 racks is located on Fujitsu, because the center has a backup power, which will help protect the machine from power outages during earthquakes or floods.

/Media reports cited above.