NEC awarded contract for new earth simulator system
(Business News, 22 May 2008 )
NEC Corporation has been awarded the contract to build the "new Earth Simulator" ultra high-speed computing system for the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).
The new Earth Simulator system will see an upgrade of the existing Earth Simulator, which has significantly contributed to the development of a simulation culture in the area of earth sciences and related technical fields, and introduce new features to deliver accurate and high-speed analysis and projections of global-scale environmental phenomena. The system will also be used to produce numerical simulations for advanced research fields that are beyond the scope of other computing systems.
The new system principally consists of a main system supercomputer, sub-system units and an operation management system, and is designed to deliver a system-wide peak performance of 131TFLOPS (TFLOPS: one trillion floating point operations per second). Effective application performance is scheduled to increase two-fold on the existing Earth Simulator. The new system will be installed in the simulator building at JAMSTEC's Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences and is expected to commence operation in March 2009.
Deployment of the new Earth Simulator will produce ultra-high speed simulations to more accurately understand and predict complicated environmental effects, such as global warming, atmospheric and marine pollution, El Nino, torrential rainfall and the progress of typhoons. These outcomes are expected to aid the development of economic and social activities, help solve global environmental problems, advance our understanding of terrestrial phenomena such as tectonics and earthquakes, and continue the work of the existing Earth Simulator in supporting the efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The new Earth Simulator has world-wide significance for Japan and NEC is extremely honored to be involved in such an important project. NEC believes the new contract is recognition of the company's superior performance in delivering advanced supercomputers that leverage years of technological excellence to a multitude of vector users, including the original Earth Simulator project.
