Cray Supercomputer Powers German Weather Service

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The new Cray XC30 supercomputer. (Photo: Cray Inc.)

Cray announced it has been awarded a $23 million dollar contract to provide two Cray XC30 supercomputers and two Cray Sonexion 1600 storage systems to Germany's National Meteorological Service -- the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD).

The new systems will enable DWD to produce higher resolution and more accurate global and regional weather forecasts. The two Cray Sonexion 1600 storage systems that will be deployed at DWD will have a combined capacity of more than 3 petabytes of storage and 72 gigabytes per-second of combined bandwidth.

"DWD is one of the world's most prestigious numerical weather prediction centers, and we're honored to provide them with the supercomputing technologies necessary for delivering such an extensive range of important services," said Dr.Ulla Thiel, Cray vice president, Europe. "We are looking forward to building a strong collaboration and close partnership with DWD. This contract is yet another example of how we continue to expand our presence in the meteorological community in Europe and across the globe."

Previously code-named “Cascade,” the XC30 was introduced last November and features the Aries system interconnect, a new Dragonfly network topology that frees applications from locality constraints, and a  cooling system that utilizes a transverse airflow to lower customers' total cost of ownership. Consisting of products and services, the multi-year, multi-phase contract is valued at more than $23 million, and the systems are expected to be delivered and put into production in 2013 and 2014.

"At our national meteorological service, we are responsible for providing services for the protection of life and property in the form of weather and climate information," said Dr. Gerhard Adrian, President of DWD. "This is the core task of the DWD, and thus it is imperative that we equip our researchers and scientists with scalable, productive, and above all, highly reliable supercomputing systems. The Cray XC30 supercomputers will be valuable resources for us, and we are pleased to be working with Cray."