Cray Awarded $40 Million Supercomputer Contract from the Korea Meteorological Administration

By DE Editors

Cray Inc. has signed a multi-year, multi-phase contract to provide the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) with a next-generation supercomputer. Valued at more than $40 million, the award is one of the largest in the area of operational numerical weather prediction in the world to-date, and will provide KMA with supercomputing, storage, and data management technologies.

Based in Seoul, South Korea, KMA’s mission is operational weather forecasting and climate research for the benefit and welfare of the Korean public and industry. KMA will use Cray’s scalable, massively parallel processing (MPP) supercomputers to provide more accurate regional and global numerical model forecasts through increased model resolution, increased ensemble sizes, and the implementation of advanced data assimilation.

Once completed, the Cray system will feature a peak performance in excess of 600 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second)  and a multi-tiered, multi-petabyte storage, archival and back-up system. The Cray system will be delivered in two phases, with acceptance of both expected during the second half of 2010.

For more information, visit Cray,  Inc.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.