One hell of a barometer!

[SlugForAButt]

£97 million barometer

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/201...ercomputer_n_6059272.html?utm_hp_ref=uk&ir=UK

http://www.cray.com/ownxc40/

480000 CPUs and we'll still get it wrong n doubt.

 

[snips86x]

oh boy - another big waste of tax payers money!

 

[P4Clock]

Just want we needed to spend £79,000,000 on.
Well done.

 

[SlugForAButt]

They're optimistically claiming it could save us £2 billion a year through better forecasting...
More importantly, I wonder how it'll run BF4 multiplayer.

 

[Digitalle]

But can it run Crysis?

 

[snips86x]

But can it run Crysis?

I would hope in 8k with the amount of money they're spending!!!

 

[mikedigitales]

Ouch! That's a lot of tax cash...

 

[randal]

Awaits new user "MetOffice" requesting spec me thread...

 

[Retow]

Seems a lot considering confidence is only slightly higher than looking out of a window

 

[snips86x]

Awaits new user "MetOffice" requesting spec me thread...

Soooo tempted!!

 

[joeyjojo]

16 petaFLOPS would make it the 4th fastest machine in the world.

http://top500.org/lists/2014/06/

Almost ten times faster than the UKs current fastest machine at ECMWF (which coincidentally is also for weather forecasting).

Well worth the investment IMO.

 

[SlugForAButt]

Des this mean that the current one will be relegated to HTPC?

 

[Akagi]

That is just totally Cray...

 

[Cosimo]

Excellent buy. Now when can I get access?

 

[randal]

Des this mean that the current one will be relegated to HTPC?

Lol, superb.

Or relegated to a pFSense installation.

 

[Jokester]

So whilst other nations do exciting things with their supercomputers, we use ours for the weather! No wonder we have a reputation.

 

[Antar Bolaeisk]

They should have got the one which could do 16 quadrillion calculations per second, would have been a better investment.

 

[doofer]

 

[alexthecheese]

Whilst the hardware is pretty amazing, I can't fathom how complex the software is that runs on these supercomputers.

 

[Dr Delphi]

Whilst the hardware is pretty amazing, I can't fathom how complex the software is that runs on these supercomputers.

I used to use supercomputers around the world just to simulate a couple of molecules of water. My biggest calculation took 3 months on over 100,000 processors using TB of RAM - got me a good research paper and proposed a new reaction pathway for the break down of the ozone layer.

These computers really are a lot of use, and can be used for real good, the calculations this will allow the MET to do will be based around the fact that they can include more variables in their understanding of the weather systems, they are ridiculously complex!