ACADEMIA

In the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, there's a lot of talk about what kind of damage we might see from future storms. The Columbia supercomputer at the NASA Ames Research Center puts Bay Area technology to use, to tell us what's coming. More than 10,000 processors power the supercomputer. Jill Matzke works in SGI's high performance computing division. They're using Silicon Graphics hardware and Intel chips to calculate trillions of bits of data per second and warn people if severe weather is ahead, helping them get away on time, helping businesses save billions of dollars a year. She says, "On a climatological basis, a business or community can plan better for a season based on the fact that they'll have some idea what things will be like." Computer weather data from all over the world is stored there, information that can be used to predict the future, and help keep you dry, "It's nice to know our technology plays a role in better forecasts and saving lives, or saving some destruction."