ESMF Press Releases

The University of California at Irvine Virtual Time Machine has garnered significant coverage to date, with additional stories in both print and broadcast media outlets slated to appear through out the week. We will
continue you to update you with additional coverage as it becomes available.

CNet: IBM sells climate research supercomputer
By Stephen Shankland,February 10, 2004, 5:18 PM PST
http://news.com.com/2100-7337_3-5156969.html?tag=nefd_top

The University of California, Irvine has bought eight IBM computers to run an interconnected collection of global climate simulations.

The overall system, which cost more than $1 million, consists of eight p655 machines, each with eight 1.5GHz Power4+ processors, and one p690 with 32 1.7GHz Power4+ processors, according to IBM and the university.

The p690 runs a simulation of the Earth's ocean, while the p655 systems model the Earth's land, atmosphere and sea ice, said Charlie Zender, assistant professor of Earth system science at the university. One of the
p655 systems shares data among the individual simulations.

The system will be used to examine issues such as how sensitive the climate is to effects such as soot from car exhaust settling on snowfields, Zender said. It also will be used to test the models themselves by comparing what they forecast with what actually takes place in the real world.

IBM has been gaining in supercomputer market share. Its competitors include Hewlett-Packard, Cray, Dell and Sun Microsystems.

The system offers a freeze-frame of the changing world of high-performance technical computing. Irvine's project doesn't tap into one trend--"Beowulf" clusters made of a large number of independent but networked Linux machines that divide a calculation job--but it will tap into another: the use of the Linux operating system.

Clustered machines, such as Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Apple G5 supercomputer or Sandia National Laboratories' upcoming Cray-based Red Storm are catching on in the supercomputing realm, growing more common on the top 500 list of the most powerful supercomputers.

"Beowulf works fine on many problems, but it doesn't work here," Zender said. Each of Irvine's simulations require a single operating system and a single pool of memory, he said.

At Irvine, each machine runs the AIX operating system, IBM's version of Unix. However, Zender said, the company plans to move one machine to Linux in a year.

IBM's pSeries machines historically have run AIX only, but Big Blue has begun aggressively pushing Linux.

The Irvine researchers would prefer Linux, he said. "If we can get the same throughput...then it makes more sense to go with Linux, because the support costs drop dramatically and because the users are more familiar with Linux--we all have Linux on our laptops and workstations," Zender said.

When evaluating competing bids, "two of the proposed systems were Linux-based systems, but the benchmarks didn't pan out," Zender said. "It was a case of not-quite-ready for prime time."

Specifically, Zender said Linux wasn't yet good enough in handling multiple threads--sequences of programming instructions that execute in parallel. "Turns out that the threading in the 2.4 (Linux) kernel was not up to snuff," he said. "There's a lot of hope that the 2.6 kernel will work for our type of application."

AIX and Linux are tangled in a lawsuit by the SCO Group, but Zender wasn't fazed by the legal action.

SCO asserts that IBM breached its Unix contract with SCO by moving Unix intellectual property into Linux; says IBM's license to ship AIX is no longer valid; and seeks license fees from Linux users.

"It's a laughable lawsuit. It will certainly be resolved sometime in the next decade, and they'll be exposed for the frauds that they are," Zender
said.

SCO spokesman Marc Modersitzki said the company believes it's not acting fraudulently. "SCO owns Unix copyrights, and we're working to protect them," he said. "We feel like we're going about this in the proper way, but I recognize that there are those that disagree."

eWeek: IBM Supercomputer to Forecast Global Warming
By Jeffrey Burt, February 10, 2004
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1523921,00.asp

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine will use an IBM
supercomputer to predict the impact of global warming on the Earth up to
300 years into the future.

The supercomputer, called the Earth System Modeling Facility, or ESMF, will
enable researchers at the university's Department of Earth System Science
to simulate how pressures on the planet's climate˜from pollutants and
chemicals to the melting of the polar ice and global warming˜will affect
future changes, according to officials with IBM, of Armonk, N.Y.

The ESMF supercomputer, which went into operation last week, comprises
seven pSeries 655 servers running on eight Power4+ servers and a 32-way
p690, all clustered together and running IBM's AIX Unix operating system.
The storage system consists of x335 systems running Red Hat Inc.'s Linux OS
and Sistina Global File System, officials said Tuesday.

The supercomputer can run at a peak of 528 gigaflops. A gigaflop is a
billion floating-point calculations per second.

InternetNews: 'Virtual Climate Time Machine' in the Cards for IBM
By Clint Boulton, february 10, 2004
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3310661

IBM (Quote, Chart) has been asked to build a system capable of predicting
climate changes 300 years into the future.
A team of 12 engineers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) has
asked IBM for a supercomputer that will help researchers to gage changes to
the Earth's surface, atmosphere and oceans to gain insight into the
progression of such concerns as global warming, synthetic pollutants and
polar ice shifts.

Referring to it as a "virtual climate time machine," Debra Goldfarb, vice
president of products and strategy at IBM, told internetnews.com such
information is needed so far in advance because minor modifications are
occurring every day to speed the global warming process, which could have
disastrous effects on the planet and its inhabitants.

"Humans are emotionally and intellectually unable to combinate that --to
see that impact over time," Goldfarb explained. "But we can't dismiss the
fundamental reality of what's going on."

Accordingly, discoveries will be shuttled to the National Science
Foundation and other national climate modeling efforts.

Dubbed the Earth System Modeling Facility (ESMF), the ESMF supercomputer
can calculate 528 gigaflops, or a massive billion floating-point operations
per second in yet another coup for IBM's vaunted POWER4+ microprocessor
architecture.

The massive computer consists of seven IBM eServer p655 AIX-based systems,
each with eight POWER4+ microprocessors, connected together with IBM's
clustering technology, and one IBM eServer p690 system, with thirty-two
POWER4+ microprocessors.

POWER architecture, geared for 64-bit computing in the enterprise, has been
praised by analysts for its ability to scale broadly up and down the
processing spectrum.

ESMF requires plenty of storage capacity to house all of the data and the
system employs two IBM xSeries 335 servers, running Red Hat Linux and
Sistina Global File System (GFS), that house 32 terabytes of RAID5 (define)
storage.

Goldfarb said the contract was especially exciting from IBM's perspective
because it further validates the company in the supercomputing sphere, in
which the Armonk, N.Y., company competes with HP, (Quote, Chart) Sun
Microsystems, (Quote, Chart) Cray (Quote, Chart) and SGI. (Quote, Chart)

Moreover, though IBM has inked several contracts to build supercomputers
for universities probing projects that require massive amounts of
calculations performed at high speeds, she said this contract is unique.

"This is really a breakthrough in performance for this scale," Goldfarb
said. "Eight, 10, even five years ago, this scale of complex model
simulations wouldn't have been possible in one department."

IBM did not reveal the cost of the ESMF contract, which is funded by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and the University of California.

Enterprise IT Planet: UC Irvine, IBM Recruit eServers for Climate Modeling
By Pedro Hernandez, February 10, 2004
http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/news/article.php/3311011

True to its supercomputing heritage, IBM has outfitted the University of
California at Irvine with systems that are attempting to make sense of
where the Earth's climate is headed. The system, being billed as a "Virtual
Climate Time Machine", is pulling together weather and ecological data to
forecast the changes to the global environment in the coming centuries.

The supercomputer's official name is Earth System Modeling Facility (ESMF).
It will be used by UC Irvine's Department of Earth System Science to gauge
the impact of a wide range of biological, chemical and geographical factors
on the planet's ecology for centuries to come. While seemingly
high-concept, the science behind the endeavor is rooted in sound data,
volumes of it.

To process this data, IBM and UC Irvine have settled on eServer p655 and
p690 systems powered by 64-bit Power4+ processors ˜ not unlike those found
in corporate data centers ˜ running AIX.
Despite IBM's Linux push, Dave Turek, the firm's VP of Deep Computing, says
that many computer departments still prefer UNIX, or AIX in this case. The
reason is more of a practical matter than perceived difficulties in porting
to Linux. According to Turek, UNIX persists with IT shops because of "a
familiarity with UNIX and years of tuning the applications" that run on the
venerable OS.

Clustered together are seven, 8-way Power4+ p655 eServers and a single,
32-way p690 sporting the same microprocessor. All told, ESMF is able to
churn out 528 gigaFLOPS (billion floating-point operations per second).

Storage is handled by a pair of xSeries 335 servers running Red Hat Linux.
Operating under the Sistina Global File system, the systems collectively
hold 32 terabytes on a RAID5 setup.

While the raw processing specs impress, Turek notes UC Irvine's system
underscores how technology has put supercomputing power within reach of
organizations that would have been priced out of the field a mere 3-5 years
ago. IBM's work in clustering technologies using readily available sever
systems has met with marketplace acceptance, says Turek, citing ESMF as an
example where "price married to performance is evidence of growing
accessibility."

HPC Wire: IBM Supercomputer Powers "Virtual Climate Time Machine"
February 10, 2004
http://www.tgc.com/breaking/1600.html

IBM announced that the University of California at Irvine (UCI) has
selected a powerful IBM supercomputer that will enable researchers to model
and predict changes to the Earth's surface, atmosphere and oceans up to 300
years into the future.

The powerful new supercomputer, dubbed the Earth System Modeling Facility
(ESMF), will be used by researchers at UC Irvine's Department of Earth
System Science (ESS) to simulate climate changes and gain answers to
critical questions such as how global warming, man-made pollutants,
polar-ice movements, and chemical cycles will impact the Earth and its
inhabitants over the next few centuries.

"Earth's weather and climate result from an intricate and complex interplay
of physical, chemical and biological processes of the atmosphere, oceans,
and land surface; they are crucial components of the global environment
that supports life on Earth," said Charles Zender, assistant professor of
Earth system science at UCI. "The ESMF IBM Supercomputer is designed to
provide sustained compute capability, speed and storage capacity necessary
to best meet the challenges involved in understanding the atmosphere and
its interactions with the Earth system, as well as developing methods for
predicting its behavior. The ESMF will also allow researchers to pursue
data- intensive research utilizing the large geophysical datasets from
current and next generation numerical models and satellite observations."

"This supercomputer will give UC Irvine the speed and performance they need
to push Earth system research to a new level - these researchers and
scientists are pursuing very important research across a broad spectrum of
environmental conditions that affect us all," said Dave Turek, vice
president, Deep Computing, IBM. "The IBM supercomputer, made up of IBM
eServer pSeries systems with POWER microprocessors, provide the complex
computational capabilities needed to help UCI researchers produce realistic
simulations and analyses as the study of long term effects of global
warming becomes more critical."

The ESMF supercomputer is one the most powerful computing systems at the
University of California, capable of calculating 528 gigaFLOPS (a billion
floating-point operations per second). The supercomputer consists of seven
IBM eServer p655 systems, each with eight POWER4+ microprocessors,
connected together with IBM's clustering technology, and one IBM eServer
p690 system, with thirty-two POWER4+ microprocessors, running AIX, IBM's
UNIX operating system.

Having been termed the first 'server on a chip,' IBM continues to invest in
the POWER architecture to offer customers open, innovative technology
solutions through either AIX, OS/400 or Linux operating systems that
complement the growing demand for 64-bit applications. IBM's family of
POWER microprocessors are among the most widely used in the industry. In
addition to being the force behind IBM's pSeries, iSeries and JS20
BladeCenter servers, the microprocessor technology can be found in Nintendo
game consoles, Apple computers, and some of the world's most powerful
supercomputers and storage systems.

The ESMF storage solution is based on dual, IBM xSeries 335 servers
leveraging Red Hat Linux and Sistina Global File System (GFS). Disk storage
consists of 32 terabytes of RAID5. This low-cost, single-namespace file
system is modular, robust and scaleable yet provides adequate read-write
bandwidth for gigabyte data-file sizes.

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the University of
California, the ESMF will power a wide spectrum of Earth-system modeling
(ESM) projects conducted by Earth system science professors, researchers,
students and collaborators. The Facility is devoted to the fundamental
understanding of the coupled physical climate, chemistry, and
biogeochemical cycles of the Earth system associated with global change.
The knowledge gained at UC Irvine feeds into national climate modeling
efforts.

About the UCI Department of Earth System Science (ESS)

The goal of the Department of Earth System Science is to increase the
scientific understanding of the Earth as a coupled system of atmosphere,
ocean, and land. For more information about the ESS, visit
http://www.ess.uci.edu/dept/info.shtml.

About IBM
IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of
leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across
IBM and key Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services,
solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take
full advantage of the new era of e-business. For more information about
IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com.

Orange County Register: Notes
February 10, 2004
http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=65908

...And UCIâ•˙s Earth System Sciences program has become the first department
of its kind in the country to have a supercomputer solely devoted for
future climate modeling. IBM says, "The supercomputer can calculate at 528
gigaFLOPS. To get an idea of how fast this really is, consider a computer
that runs one billion calculations each second. A billionth of a second is
about the time it takes for light to move one foot. So, if you stood on the
goal line of a football field and struck a match, a supercomputer could
perform more than 300 calculations before someone standing on the other
goal line saw the match light."

ZDNet: IBM sells climate research supercomputer
By Stephen Shankland, February 10, 2004
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-5156969.html

The University of California, Irvine has bought eight IBM computers to run
an interconnected collection of global climate simulations.

The overall system, which cost more than $1 million, consists of eight p655
machines, each with eight 1.5GHz Power4+ processors, and one p690 with 32
1.7GHz Power4+ processors, according to IBM and the university.

The p690 runs a simulation of the Earth's ocean, while the p655 systems
model the Earth's land, atmosphere and sea ice, said Charlie Zender,
assistant professor of Earth system science at the university. One of the
p655 systems shares data among the individual simulations.

The system will be used to examine issues such as how sensitive the climate
is to effects such as soot from car exhaust settling on snowfields, Zender
said. It also will be used to test the models themselves by comparing what
they forecast with what actually takes place in the real world.

IBM has been gaining in supercomputer market share. Its competitors include
Hewlett-Packard, Cray, Dell and Sun Microsystems.

The system offers a freeze-frame of the changing world of high-performance
technical computing. Irvine's project doesn't tap into one trend--"Beowulf"
clusters made of a large number of independent but networked Linux machines
that divide a calculation job--but it will tap into another: the use of the
Linux operating system.

Clustered machines, such as Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Apple G5
supercomputer or Sandia National Laboratories' upcoming Cray-based Red
Storm are catching on in the supercomputing realm, growing more common on
the top 500 list of the most powerful supercomputers.

"Beowulf works fine on many problems, but it doesn't work here," Zender
said. Each of Irvine's simulations require a single operating system and a
single pool of memory, he said.

At Irvine, each machine runs the AIX operating system, IBM's version of
Unix. However, Zender said, the company plans to move one machine to Linux
in a year.

IBM's pSeries machines historically have run AIX only, but Big Blue has
begun aggressively pushing Linux.

The Irvine researchers would prefer Linux, he said. "If we can get the same
throughput...then it makes more sense to go with Linux, because the support
costs drop dramatically and because the users are more familiar with
Linux--we all have Linux on our laptops and workstations," Zender said.

When evaluating competing bids, "two of the proposed systems were
Linux-based systems, but the benchmarks didn't pan out," Zender said. "It
was a case of not-quite-ready for prime time."

Specifically, Zender said Linux wasn't yet good enough in handling multiple
threads--sequences of programming instructions that execute in parallel.
"Turns out that the threading in the 2.4 (Linux) kernel was not up to
snuff," he said. "There's a lot of hope that the 2.6 kernel will work for
our type of application."

AIX and Linux are tangled in a lawsuit by the SCO Group, but Zender wasn't
fazed by the legal action.

SCO asserts that IBM breached its Unix contract with SCO by moving Unix
intellectual property into Linux; says IBM's license to ship AIX is no
longer valid; and seeks license fees from Linux users.

"It's a laughable lawsuit. It will certainly be resolved sometime in the
next decade, and they'll be exposed for the frauds that they are," Zender
said.

SCO spokesman Marc Modersitzki said the company believes it's not acting
fraudulently. "SCO owns Unix copyrights, and we're working to protect
them," he said. "We feel like we're going about this in the proper way, but
I recognize that there are those that disagree."

ZDNetUK (CNet): IBM supercomputers to simulate climate change
By Stephen Shankland, February 11, 2004, 11:20 GMT
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/emergingtech/0,39020357,39146109,00.htm

The University of California, Irvine has bought eight IBM computers to run
an interconnected collection of global climate simulations.

The overall system, which cost more than $1m (£0.54m), consists of eight
p655 machines, each with eight 1.5GHz Power4+ processors, and one p690 with
32 1.7GHz Power4+ processors, according to IBM and the university.

The p690 runs a simulation of the Earth's ocean, while the p655 systems
model the Earth's land, atmosphere and sea ice, said Charlie Zender,
assistant professor of Earth system science at the university. One of the
p655 systems shares data among the individual simulations.

The system will be used to examine issues such as how sensitive the climate
is to effects such as soot from car exhaust settling on snowfields, Zender
said. It also will be used to test the models themselves by comparing what
they forecast with what actually takes place in the real world.

IBM has been gaining in supercomputer market share. Its competitors include
Hewlett-Packard, Cray, Dell and Sun Microsystems.

The system offers a freeze-frame of the changing world of high-performance
technical computing. Irvine's project doesn't tap into one trend --
"Beowulf" clusters made of a large number of independent but networked
Linux machines that divide a calculation job -- but it will tap into
another: the use of the Linux operating system.

Clustered machines, such as Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Apple G5
supercomputer or Sandia National Laboratories' upcoming Cray-based Red
Storm are catching on in the supercomputing realm, growing more common on
the top 500 list of the most powerful supercomputers.

"Beowulf works fine on many problems, but it doesn't work here," Zender
said. Each of Irvine's simulations requires a single operating system and a
single pool of memory, he said.

At Irvine, each machine runs the AIX operating system, which is IBM's
version of Unix. However, Zender said, the company plans to move one
machine to Linux in a year.

IBM's pSeries machines historically have run AIX only, but Big Blue has
begun aggressively pushing Linux.

The Irvine researchers would prefer Linux, he said. "If we can get the same
throughput... then it makes more sense to go with Linux, because the
support costs drop dramatically and because the users are more familiar
with Linux -- we all have Linux on our laptops and workstations," Zender
said.

When evaluating competing bids, "two of the proposed systems were
Linux-based systems, but the benchmarks didn't pan out," Zender said. "It
was a case of not-quite-ready for prime time."

Specifically, Zender said Linux wasn't yet good enough in handling multiple
threads -- sequences of programming instructions that execute in parallel.
"Turns out that the threading in the 2.4 [Linux] kernel was not up to
snuff," he said. "There's a lot of hope that the 2.6 kernel will work for
our type of application."

AIX and Linux are tangled in a lawsuit by the SCO Group, but Zender wasn't
fazed by the legal action.

SCO asserts that IBM breached its Unix contract with SCO by moving Unix
intellectual property into Linux; says IBM's licence to ship AIX is no
longer valid; and seeks licence fees from Linux users.

"It's a laughable lawsuit. It will certainly be resolved sometime in the
next decade, and they'll be exposed for the frauds that they are," Zender
said.

SCO spokesman Marc Modersitzki said the company believes it's not acting
fraudulently. "SCO owns Unix copyrights, and we're working to protect
them," he said. "We feel like we're going about this in the proper way, but
I recognise that there are those that disagree."

CNet Asia: IBM supercomputers to simulate climate change
By Stephen Shankland, February 11, 2004, 11:20 GMT
http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/systems/0,39001153,39167932,00.htm

The University of California, Irvine has bought eight IBM computers to run
an interconnected collection of global climate simulations.

The overall system, which cost more than $1m (£0.54m), consists of eight
p655 machines, each with eight 1.5GHz Power4+ processors, and one p690 with
32 1.7GHz Power4+ processors, according to IBM and the university.

The p690 runs a simulation of the Earth's ocean, while the p655 systems
model the Earth's land, atmosphere and sea ice, said Charlie Zender,
assistant professor of Earth system science at the university. One of the
p655 systems shares data among the individual simulations.

The system will be used to examine issues such as how sensitive the climate
is to effects such as soot from car exhaust settling on snowfields, Zender
said. It also will be used to test the models themselves by comparing what
they forecast with what actually takes place in the real world.

IBM has been gaining in supercomputer market share. Its competitors include
Hewlett-Packard, Cray, Dell and Sun Microsystems.

The system offers a freeze-frame of the changing world of high-performance
technical computing. Irvine's project doesn't tap into one trend --
"Beowulf" clusters made of a large number of independent but networked
Linux machines that divide a calculation job -- but it will tap into
another: the use of the Linux operating system.

Clustered machines, such as Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Apple G5
supercomputer or Sandia National Laboratories' upcoming Cray-based Red
Storm are catching on in the supercomputing realm, growing more common on
the top 500 list of the most powerful supercomputers.

"Beowulf works fine on many problems, but it doesn't work here," Zender
said. Each of Irvine's simulations requires a single operating system and a
single pool of memory, he said.

At Irvine, each machine runs the AIX operating system, which is IBM's
version of Unix. However, Zender said, the company plans to move one
machine to Linux in a year.

IBM's pSeries machines historically have run AIX only, but Big Blue has begun aggressively pushing Linux.

The Irvine researchers would prefer Linux, he said. "If we can get the same throughput... then it makes more sense to go with Linux, because the support costs drop dramatically and because the users are more familiar with Linux -- we all have Linux on our laptops and workstations," Zender said.

When evaluating competing bids, "two of the proposed systems were Linux-based systems, but the benchmarks didn't pan out," Zender said. "It was a case of not-quite-ready for prime time."

Specifically, Zender said Linux wasn't yet good enough in handling multiple threads -- sequences of programming instructions that execute in parallel. "Turns out that the threading in the 2.4 [Linux] kernel was not up to snuff," he said. "There's a lot of hope that the 2.6 kernel will work for our type of application."

AIX and Linux are tangled in a lawsuit by the SCO Group, but Zender wasn't fazed by the legal action.

SCO asserts that IBM breached its Unix contract with SCO by moving Unix intellectual property into Linux; says IBM's licence to ship AIX is no longer valid; and seeks licence fees from Linux users.

"It's a laughable lawsuit. It will certainly be resolved sometime in the next decade, and they'll be exposed for the frauds that they are," Zender said.

SCO spokesman Marc Modersitzki said the company believes it's not acting fraudulently. "SCO owns Unix copyrights, and we're working to protect them," he said. "We feel like we're going about this in the proper way, but I recognise that there are those that disagree."

Computerworld Australia: New IBM supercomputer to help with weather
modeling
By Todd R. Weiss, February 11, 2004
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=1779167097&fp=16&fpid=0

IBM has built a supercomputer that will serve as a "virtual climate time machine" for researchers at the University of California, Irvine, who plan to use it to model the Earth's surface, atmosphere and oceans for up to 300 years into the future.

The supercomputer, dubbed the "Earth System Modeling Facility," consists of seven clustered IBM eServer p655 servers that are each equipped with eight Power4+ CPUs, plus an IBM eServer p690, which includes 32 Power4+ CPUs. It runs AIX Unix and will cost just over US$1 million, according to David Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM. The 528GFLOPS system is capable of calculating 1 billion floating-point operations per second (FLOPS).

Also included in the setup is 32TB of RAID5 storage using two IBM xSeries 335 servers running Red Hat Linux and Sistina Software Inc.'s Global File System.

The machine will be used by researchers in the UC Davis Department of Earth System Science to predict the impact of global warming, pollution and other stresses on the earth. Among the questions to be analyzed is how global warming, man-made pollutants, polar-ice movements and chemical cycles will affect the Earth and its inhabitants.

In its present configuration, the machine offers a large processing punch at a relatively low price for a supercomputer, Turek said. That means smaller groups that once wouldn't have been able to afford such high-end equipment will now have access to more powerful machines.

Results of the research will be provided to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other national climate modeling efforts. The Earth System Modeling Facility is being paid for with money from the NSF and the university.

Charles Zender, assistant professor of Earth system science at UC Davis, said the supercomputer will allow researchers to pursue data-intensive research using large geophysical data sets.

The school's Department of Earth System Science is charged with helping to increase the scientific understanding of the Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land.

MicroScope (Computeworld): IBM supercomputer helps predict the Earth's
climate 300 years into the future
February 11, 2004
http://www.microscope.co.uk/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=128287&liArticleTypeID=
1&liCategoryID=6&liChannelID=4&liFlavourID=2&sSearch=&nPage=1

IBM has built a supercomputer that will serve as a "virtual climate time machine" for researchers at the University of California, who will use it to model the Earth's surface, atmosphere and oceans for up to 300 years into the future.

The supercomputer, called the Earth System Modelling Facility, consists of seven clustered IBM eServer p655 servers which are each equipped with eight Power4+ CPUs, plus an IBM eServer p690, which includes 32 Power4+ CPUs.

It runs AIX Unix and will cost just over $1m, according to David Turek, vice-president of deep computing at IBM. The 528GFlops system is capable of calculating one billion floating-point operations per second (Flops).

Also included in the setup is 32TBytes of RAID5 storage using two IBM xSeries 335 servers running Red Hat Linux and Sistina Software's Global File System.

The machine will be used by researchers in the university's Davis Department of Earth System Science to predict the impact of global warming, pollution and other stresses on the earth.

Among the questions to be analysed is how global warming, man-made pollutants, polar-ice movements and chemical cycles will affect the Earth and its inhabitants.

In its present configuration, the machine offers a large processing punch at a relatively low price for a supercomputer, enabling smaller groups access to more powerful machines.

Results of the research will be provided to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other national climate modelling efforts. The Earth System Modelling Facility is being paid for with money from the NSF and the university.

Charles Zender, assistant professor of Earth system science at the university's Davis department, said the supercomputer will allow researchers to pursue data-intensive research using large geophysical data sets.

Todd R Weiss writes for Computerworld