Geerd-R. Hoffmann - Böcker

Numerical weather prediction on the one hand needs a very large number of floating point calculations, but on the other hand is very time-critical. Therefore, the largest computers available, i.e., the "supercomputers", have usually been acquired by the national meteorological services long before they were used in other fields of research or business. Since the available technology limits the speed of any single computer, parallel computations have become necessary to achieve further improvements in the number of results produced per time unit. This book collects the papers presented at two workshops held at ECMWF on the topic of parallel processing in meteorological models. It provides an insight into the state-of-the-art in using parallel processors operationally and allows extrapolation to other time-critical applications. It also shows trends in migrating to massive parallel systems in the near future.

The Dawn of Massively Parallel Processing in Meteorology presents collected papers of the third workshop on this topic held at the European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). It provides an insight into the state of the art in using parallel processors operationally, and allows extrapolation to other time-critical applications. It also documents the advent of massively parallel systems to cope with these applications.

Weather forecasting and climatology have traditionally been users of the world's fastest supercomputers. The recent emergence of massively parallel supercomputers as likely successors to current vector supercomputers has created an acute need to convert weather and climate models to suit parallel supercomputers with thousands of processors. Several major efforts are underway worldwide to accomplish this. ECMWF has established itself as the central venue for bringing together operational weather forecasters, climate researchers and parallel computer manufacturers to share their experience on these efforts every second year. The recent dramatic developments in supercomputer manufacturing have made the 1992 ECMWF Workshop timelier than before.

Weather forecasting and climatology have traditionally been users of the world's fastest supercomputers. The emergence of massively parallel supercomputers as likely successors to current vector supercomputers has resulted in the conversion of weather and climate models to suit parallel supercomputers with thousands of processors. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has established itself as the central venue for bringing together operational weather forecasters, climate researchers and parallel computer manufacturers to share their experiences about these efforts every other year. This book presents an excellent cross-section of the results achieved so far in this demanding area of high-performance computing.