Supercomputers prevent energy cuts

05 September 2008

The Met Office’s plans to reduce its energy consumption will be hindered by the testing of its new supercomputer whilst its current one is still in operation.

In the Met Office’s annual report, the weather information service said it will not be able to reduce energy consumption during the new supercomputer’s testing period in 2008/09. The report said they will still look for other ways to reduce energy consumption.

The new supercomputer is expected to be in place by 2009, with a secondary upgrade to it in 2011. Once complete, the supercomputer should rank as one of the top 20 most powerful computers in the world with a peak performance of 125 trillion floating point operations per second.

Robert Napier, Met Office chairman, said in the report: "We are aware that our ability to deliver high value information to our public, government and commercial customers is limited by our current and planned supercomputing capability and are seeking additional investment in supercomputing to ensure that we fully exploit the science at our disposal."

The supercomputer will be provided by IBM in a £33m contract.