Austria unveils new vector super

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

NEC is announcing today that the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) in Vienna, Austria, will begin operation of its shiny new SX-8R vector computer today.

From the release

With the new vector computer the meteorologists can now compute four as opposed to two forecasts per day in a matter of minutes. A further aim is to improve the accuracy. The calculation will be made on denser grid points with grid sizes of 2.5 kilometres. The Austrian meteorologists are currently anticipating a horizontal resolution of 9.6 kilometres.

“We wanted to increase the quality of our forecasts yet further, so we decided to replace our system which was five years old. In the invitation to tender we put high demands on the bidders with our specifications for processing power, space requirements, power consumption and cooling requirements,” Neuwirth continues. NEC proposed the power-saving computer that achieves the highest performance values in the smallest of spaces.

Fun fact: the ZAMG was founded in 1851.