IBM To Build Supercomputer To Help Forecast Weather

IBM is building a supercomputer that can process 20 trillion operations per second. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts plans to be using the supercomputer, dubbed Blue Storm, by 2004 to detect storms earlier and aid forecasting.

IBM will use 100 of its 690 AIX servers, which top out today at 32 processors, to get Blue Storm up and running. The center will use software developed for IBM's SP clusters.

Peter Ungaro, IBM's VP of high-performance computing, says such a powerful system could also help IT execs. "Since corporations require an increasing amount of computing power, the massive supercomputers we provide to research organizations become the basis of the next generation of business supercomputers," he says. "Blue Storm's performance and storage capability lend themselves to a wide range of commercial applications, such as data mining, product design, and E-commerce."