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| Scientists run tests at Korea Meteorological Administration's weather forecasting system Supercomputer No.3 at National Center for Meteorological Supercomputer in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, in March 2010. / Korea Times file |
By Ko Dong-hwan
South Korea's top weather watchdog will launch a new supercomputer, faster than most in the world's top 10, to provide more precise forecasts.
The Korea Meteorological Administration's (KMA) "Supercomputer No.5" will have a speed of 50 petaflops (PFLOPS) ― 50 quadrillion calculations a second. The machine will generate more than a million weather maps a day and will be introduced by 2020.
The KMA's Supercomputer No.4 has a speed of 5.8 PFLOPS, generating 160,000 weather maps a day. The new supercomputer will be "more three-dimensional and precise," the KMA said.
"Supercomputer No.5 will be designed and built by companies overseas," Kim Se-jong, Deputy Director of the National Center for Meteorological Supercomputer, told The Korea Times.
Supercomputer No.5 is special because two weather forecast models will "co-exist" within in it ― "UM," developed in England, which the administration has been using so far, and a recently completed South Korean model designed for domestic climate reading.
"The machine will have to live with both models for some time after its deployment, which is why it requires high computing speed," Kim said.
How will Supercomputer No.5 realize more precise weather forecasts?
All supercomputers divide the atmosphere into smaller sections. Now, each block measures 17 kilometers. The new machine will narrow the distance to 10 kilometers, scanning each block more closely, computing much more and reaching a higher altitude than before.
"The improved scanning by the new supercomputer will allow us to see things we could never see before, thus making more precise weather forecast maps," Kim said. "It's like doctors being given an upgraded surgical tool before operating on patients."
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| Japanese supercomputer 'K' was manufactured by Fujitsu and installed at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science campus in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture. Going operational in June 2011, it is used for climate research, disaster prevention and medical research. The Linux-based system works with 10.51 petaflops speed, eighth fastest in the world as of June 2017. / Korea Times file |
South Korea's weather forecasting has been behind neighboring countries in precision. While Supercomputer No. 4 was pushed outside the world's top 50 last year, China acquired the world's fastest computer ― capable of 93 PFLOPS ― in 2016. Japan's weather machine is ranked No. 4 at 19 PFLOPS.
Supercomputer No.5 is expected to boost South Korea's weather forecasting competency. The computer will "increase forecasters' precision by generating faster forecast materials with improved quality," the KMA said.
"Researchers say weather forecast precision depends 28 percent on forecasters' competency, 32 percent on quality of materials and 40 percent on the machine's capability. The supercomputer's quality is important in such a sense."
But there are concerns that Supercomputer No.5 will not be the silver bullet, as all forecasts in the end depend on human input after overall analysis.
Supercomputer No.5, worth over 60 billion won ($56 million), will be the most expensive office equipment owned by the South Korean government, surpassing its predecessor's 44.2 billion won.
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| Supercomputer No.3's "Haedam" unit was operated by the Korea Meteorological Administration from 2010 until 2016. / Korea Times file |
KMA's history of supercomputers began in 1999, when it deployed the SX-5 vector supercomputer by Japan's NEC. The machine, with 28 CPUs, a speed of 224 gigaflops (GFLOPS), a 224-gigabyte memory, a RAD 3 (3.78 terabytes) storage device and 14 terabytes of backup capacity, ran until 2005.
The X1E by U.S. company Cray was next. With a maximum speed of 18.5 teraflops (TFLOPS), Supercomputer No.2 was set up at the Internet Data Center, 10 kilometers from the administration office in Dongjak-gu, Seoul. It was then moved to the newly built National Center for Meteorological Supercomputer in Cheogju, North Chungcheong Province, in 2010. It was decommissioned in 2012.
The next version, Cray's XE6 with 758 TFLOPS, worked on two separate systems ― "Haeon" for operation in practice and "Haedam" for analysis and backup. Supercomputer No.3 ran based on massive parallel processing (MPP). It operated until May 2016.
Cray's XC40, Supercomputer No.4 now in service, was commissioned in June 2015. The MPP-based system consists of two physically separate units, each comprising 16 cabinets.
"The past supercomputers had five years of operation," Kim said. "Supercomputer No.5 will have one year added to the period. After six years, it will be decommissioned by the government. After that, it will be consigned to other government offices wishing to use it, if they have enough resources to manage the machine's operational costs."
