In this video, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang showcases new weather prediction capabilities enabled by GPUs. The demo was initially shown on the big screen at SC18 in Dallas for a crowd of more than 700 conference attendees.
We’re looking at a future prediction of microclimates,” Huang said.
A rich map of a million square kilometers of Switzerland and its neighbors — demarcated with high- and low-pressure areas and varying winds — shimmers on a large 4K screen. The map is the product of a GPU-accelerated COSMO weather prediction model. It offers resolution down to one square kilometer as well as 80 altitude layers — from the ground to as high as 20 kilometers. The model can predict two days of weather in just 20 minutes running on a single NVIDIA DGX-2 supercomputer. That’s computing muscle equivalent to 75 dual-socket CPU nodes.
It depicts the current state of the atmosphere and predicts its future state by solving equations for fluid flow and atmospheric physical processes. The model’s ultra-fine level of resolution enables the prediction of weather down to microclimates, which has enormous applications for those engaged in transportation, agriculture, aviation and even simple outdoor recreation activities like hiking.
