Nasa uses AlphaServer SC45 system for climate research studies

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is using a powerful
hp AlphaServer SC supercomputer for climate research in environmental
issues such as global warming.

Computer Sciences Corporation installed the hp AlphaServer SC45
supercomputer at the NASA Center for Computational Sciences at the
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in the first stage of a
two-year NASA contract. The system, running the Tru64 UNIX operating
system, includes more than 500 Alpha 1-GHz processors.

This fall, the AlphaServer supercomputer will be expanded to more than
1,300 processors with the addition of more than 800 1.25 GHz Alpha
processors. When fully deployed, the AlphaServer SC45 system will
deliver peak performance of 3.2 TeraOPS and have 8 Terabytes of HP
StorageWorks(tm) Fibre Channel(tm)-based storage. HP Services will
support the entire installation to ensure the highest levels of system
availability.

In addition, CSC has installed a 32-processor hp AlphaServer SC45 system
at Columbia University in New York, for complementary environmental
research at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies.

The announcement further strengthens HP's position as the leader in the
high-performance technical computing marketplace. According to industry
research group International Data Corp., the combined market share of HP
and Compaq represented 41.5 percent of the $5.06 billion
high-performance computing market in 2001.

The HP supercomputer was chosen by NASA following a comprehensive
competitive proposal review that included a number of benchmark tests,
featuring the Aries atmospheric modeling and Poseidon oceanic modeling
codes. The hp AlphaServer SC45 system produced the largest guaranteed
throughput measurement in both tests. The HP system will replace several
Cray(R) supercomputers, including a Cray T3E system that NASA has been
using since 1997.

This latest use of AlphaServer systems further illustrates how
supercomputing technology is now influencing our day-to-day lives.
Another AlphaServer supercomputer developed and implemented by the
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center in collaboration with HP (at the time
Compaq) with funding from the National Science Foundation provides
computational capability to scientists and engineers nationwide. The
system is used in many areas of research that have wide social impact,
including earthquake modeling, storm-scale weather forecasting, global
climate change, and protein genomics, modeling that is integral to the
development of new drug therapies. We invite you to learn more about
AlphaServer SC systems.

quote

"This new 1.25 GHz HP AlphaServer SC45 supercomputer will enable NASA to
extract more information from space based observations to make more
accurate predictions of climate on seasonal and multi-decade timescales."

Richard Rood
Acting Chief Earth and Space Data Computing Division
NASA/Goddard