Eviden, a renowned technology company, recently revealed that it has been awarded a substantial $100 million contract by the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), acting on behalf of the India Ministry of Earth Sciences. The contract entails the construction of two cutting-edge supercomputers dedicated to weather modeling and climate research for the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and NCMRWF.

These state-of-the-art systems, built upon Eviden's highly regarded BullSequana XH2000 platform, are projected to possess an impressive combined power capacity of up to 21.3 Petaflops. Notably, Eviden's patented Direct Liquid Cooling technology will be employed to efficiently cool the supercomputers, utilizing warm water.

The upcoming NCMRWF supercomputer, situated in Noida, will be equipped with an impressive 8.3-Petaflop computing capacity dedicated to weather and climate modeling. Its primary objective is to support advanced numerical weather research initiatives throughout India. The supercomputer will amalgamate 2,100 CPU nodes featuring AMD EPYCTM 7643 processors, along with 18 GPU nodes powered by NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. To ensure seamless connectivity, the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform will be incorporated.

Additionally, Micron will provide high-performance memory for enhanced processing capabilities. The NCMRWF supercomputer will boast a remarkable storage capacity, including 2PB of all-flash storage and 20PB of disk-based DDN EXAScaler ES400NVX2 parallel filesystem storage.

The forthcoming supercomputer assigned to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune is set to significantly enhance the atmosphere and climate research with its impressive 13 Petaflops of computational power. It will incorporate a robust infrastructure comprising 3,000 CPU nodes featuring AMD EPYCTM 7643 processors, as well as 26 GPU nodes powered by NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs.

The system will benefit from the NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking platform, which includes In-Network Computing capabilities. With a storage capacity of 3PB for all-flash storage and 29PB for disk-based DDN EXAScaler ES400NVX2 storage, along with advanced Micron high-technology memory, the IITM supercomputer is poised to deliver enhanced performance. Additionally, the contract entails upgrading the data centers at both IITM and NCMRWF sites to bolster their capabilities.

Dr. M Ravichandran, Secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, stressed the vital need for substantial computing power in weather and climate research. He expressed confidence in the partnership with the Atos Group to enhance forecast resolutions and accuracy. Jean-Philippe Poirault, CEO of Big Data and Security at Eviden, Atos Group, expressed his honor in supporting IITM and NCMRWF, recognizing India's prominent position in the high-performance computing (HPC) industry and its unwavering commitment to climate research. The collaboration between the expertise of IITM and NCMRWF, along with Eviden's proficiency in delivering robust HPC systems for weather modeling, ensures a concerted effort to tackle the most challenging climate research objectives.

Image source: TOI