GOVERNMENT

Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. today announced that it has signed a five-year contract valued at $43.2 million to supply the next-generation supercomputer to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), one of the world's premier weather forecasting and research centers. Cray and KMA also will jointly establish an Earth System Research Center aimed at advancing atmospheric modeling in the East Asia Pacific region, the company said. On April 29, Cray reported that it had been selected for the competitive contract award, subject to successful contract completion. The contract has now been completed. Cray was selected based on the superior performance of the Cray X1(TM) supercomputer system and the Cray X1E(TM) planned successor system on KMA's benchmark suite of weather prediction applications. Additional key criteria included Cray's proposed storage area network (SAN), data management solution and overall service capabilities. KMA and Korea's Public Procurement Services reported that other bidders included Hewlett-Packard, IBM and NEC. D. I. Lee, KMA's chief, Supercomputer Center Branch, said, "I would like to express my satisfaction at the selection of the Cray system as our next supercomputer, based on the real performance of KMA's operational applications. The Cray system as a data processing engine will provide the basic infrastructure to understand the Earth System and to make the information and products to support sound decision-making for national policy and management. KMA expects not only good performance from the Cray system, but also good support from Cray as a company." "The global weather-environmental community has extremely demanding requirements for supercomputer capability and reliability, and KMA is one of the premier sites in this community," said Cray Chairman and CEO Jim Rottsolk. "This win demonstrates that Cray is renewing its leadership in the weather-environmental market by offering systems purpose-built for the most challenging applications. We look forward to collaborating closely with KMA to achieve their ambitious goals." Cray's first-phase delivery to KMA is scheduled for later this year, with a system based on the current Cray X1 technology. With a peak speed of more than two teraflops (two trillion calculations per second), this will be one of the largest numerical weather forecasting systems in the world. Cray will also provide service and support, including applications support for KMA's research and operational weather and climate models. In 2005, Cray will provide a major upgrade to the successor Cray X1E technology, which will enable still higher-resolution weather models and larger ensemble forecasts. The new Cray supercomputing solution will support KMA's operational mission and help advance KMA's leadership status among numerical weather prediction centers worldwide. The enhanced computational capabilities will allow KMA to improve the forecast accuracy of very short-range severe weather phenomena, and the prediction of long-term monsoon and climate-change events. The socio-economic benefits of the improved forecasting ability could be substantial, Cray officials said. For example, in September 2002 typhoon Rusa hit the South Korean peninsula, causing more than 50 deaths and as much as $4 billion in damages while severely impairing the country's infrastructure.