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IBM and Cray Receive Funds to Develop Weather System

Telling what the weather will be is an ability that we would all like to posses. The U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency has taken that will to the next step, and aims at building a system to predict the weather. IBM and Cray Inc were both approached on the matter, and the U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency wants to use the next generation of supercomputers for the task.

IBM`s and Cray`s computers will be used to model entire biological systems, monitor changes in earth`s climate and many other complicated applications. IBM will receive $244 million and Cray will enjoy $250 million over a course of four years for their involvement in the project. IBM plans to use the money and investigate system architectures, application programming styles, and other fields instead of focusing on sheer processing power. The challenge will force IBM to think of new ways to increase calculation power. IBM believes that the initiative will take them far behind the 2X performance level, which the company traditionally aims for once working on improvements.

Cray will also use the funds to develop their current products, and will focus on hybrid system modals that use different processors technology together. Both projects will progress simultaneously and the results will be used into the new weather system. It`s hard to tell if the system will be accurate or how reliable will the results be, but the initiative will defiantly push the level of available technology further in all aspects.