News | June 14, 1999

SGI Supercomputers Find Niche In Weather/Environmental Sector

In recent months, environmental agencies in the US and abroad have purchased some $25 million in supercomputers from Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI; Mountain View, CA; 650-960-1980), for use in everything from creating daily weather forecasts to modeling the behavior of El Nino. The brisk sales activity for SGI's systems reflects the expanding use of supercomputers in the weather and environmental sector.

"In the past, only a few environmental organizations have committed significant resources to high-performance computers," said Steve Adamec, director of Department of Defense Major Shared Resource Center, Naval Oceanographic Office. "But now we're seeing major supercomputing investments from other members of the wider environmental community who, like us, support complex environmental studies of the ocean, or research air, ground, and water pollution."

Recent SGI environmental supercomputer sales include the following:

  • The UK Meteorological Office purchased an additional Cray T3E supercomputer, making it one of the ten largest supercomputer sites in the world. The Meteorological Office issues severe weather warnings throughout the UK.
  • The US Army Corps of Engineers at Vicksburg, MS, upgraded itsCray T3E supercomputer. The Corps will model how pollutants travel through different soils to develop more effective methods of containment and treatment on military bases.
  • The Naval Oceanographic Office acquired an SGI Cray SV1 supercomputer to simulate ocean currents and topography. The office's primary goals are developing time-critical weather and ocean information in support of Navy missions, and supporting defense research and development in the broad area of environmental quality and simulation.

Other SGI customers in the environmental arena include NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory; and Germany's national weather service, Deutscher Wetterdienst.

For more information, call SGI at 650-960-1980.