Seattle supercomputer maker Cray Inc. has sealed a $23 million deal to deliver two XC30 supercomputers and two Sonexion 1600 storage systems to Germany’s National Meteorological Service, one of the world’s top weather prediction centers.
Cray said in a press release today that researchers at Deutscher Wetterdienst, or DWD, will be able to use the machines to produce higher resolution and more accurate global and regional weather forecasts. Those predictions will be used to issue official warnings of serious weather occurrences.
“At our national meteorological service, we are responsible for providing services for the protection of life and property in the form of weather and climate information,” said Prof. Dr. Gerhard Adrian, President of DWD. “This is the core task of the DWD, and thus it is imperative that we equip our researchers and scientists with scalable, productive, and above all, highly reliable supercomputing systems. The Cray XC30 supercomputers will be valuable resources for us, and we are pleased to be working with Cray.”
The storage systems deployed in Germany will have combined capacity of 3 petabytes of storage and 72 gigabytes per-second of combined bandwidth. The systems are expected to be put into production next year.
The deal is yet another dose of good news for Cray, which was the top performing tech stock in the Seattle region last year. Over the past year, shares of Cray are up more than 150 percent.
