NEC Supplies LX Supercomputer to Czech Hydrometeorological Institute

TOKYO, June 15, 2017 – (JCN Newswire) – NEC
Corporation (TSE: 6701) today announced that the Czech Hydrometeorological
Institute (CHMI) in the Czech Republic selected NEC Deutschland GmbH to provide
the next generation supercomputer system utilizing NEC’s scale-out LX series compute
servers for their weather forecasts.NEC’s scale-out LX series HPC cluster will
enable the Czech Hydrometeorological Service to increase the accuracy of
numerical weather forecasting and related applications, namely warning systems.
Weather prediction models are increasingly complex, including rainfall,
temperature, wind and related variables that have to be calculated as precisely
as possible several days in advance. At the same time, regional peculiarities
such as orography and terrain physiography need to be considered. In addition,
the public must be made aware quickly of predictions of high impact weather
events affecting daily life, including environmental risks linked to air
pollution. High-performance computing (HPC) is therefore needed for running and
completing weather and climate simulation jobs in time.

NEC will deliver the computational power of more
than 300 nodes, connected through a high-speed Mellanox EDR InfiniBand network
and containing the new Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 product family dual socket compute
nodes, with a total of over 3,500 computational cores.

The Supercomputer is configured for high
availability, including redundant storage and power supplies, as operation is
required 24×7.

Moreover, the computational peak performance of
this HPC cluster will be more than 80 times faster than the currently used
system.

This HPC solution also consists of a
high-performance storage solution based on the NEC LXFS-z parallel file-system
appliance, with more than 1 Petabyte of storage capacity and a bandwidth
performance of more than 30 Gigabytes per second (GB/s), which are required to
meet the production needs of the CHMI. This scalable ZFS-based Lustre solution
also provides advanced data integrity features paired with a high density and high
reliability design.

The new system is scheduled to be put into
operation in early 2018.

“Reliable HPC technology by NEC shall be
important both for forecast production and innovation; after Meteo-France, CHMI
is the second largest contributor to the development of the ALADIN Numerical
Weather Prediction System, currently used by 26 countries. Moreover, in this
project, we have a specific goal to improve air quality trend forecasts in
relation to meteorological conditions and the performance of air quality
warning systems,” said Dr. Radmila Brozkova, head of the Numerical Weather
Prediction Department, CHMI.”We are very happy that CHMI has selected
NEC to deliver an HPC solution for their weather and climate simulations, as
NEC has a very special expertise in meteorological applications. For years, we
have been successfully collaborating with meteorological institutes, and we
look forward to cultivating these partnerships further,” said Andreas
Gottlicher, Senior Sales Manager, NEC Deutschland.

NEC has a long-term track record in climate
research and weather forecasting and holds a leading position in the
supercomputer market.

About the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute

The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute is the
Czech Republic’s central government institution for the fields of air quality,
hydrology, water quality, climatology and meteorology, performing this function
as an objective specialised service. It was established in 1919 as National
Meteorological Institute. The present-day organization of the Institute covers
hydrology and air quality as well. The Institute is run under the authority of
the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic and its main task is to
establish and operate national monitoring and observation networks, create and
maintain data bases of data on the condition and quality of the air and on
sources of air pollution, on the condition and development of the atmosphere,
and on the quantity and quality of water, and provide both climate and
operating information about the condition of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, and
forecasts and warnings alerting to dangerous hydrometeorological phenomena.

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration
of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the
world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize
the company’s experience and global resources, NEC’s advanced technologies meet
the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100
years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses
and society. For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com.

Based on its Mid-term Management Plan 2015, the
NEC Group globally provides “Solutions for Society” that promote the
safety, security, efficiency and equality of society. Under the company’s
corporate message of “Orchestrating a brighter world,” NEC aims to
help solve a wide range of challenging issues and to create new social value
for the changing world of tomorrow. For more information, please visit http://www.nec.com/en/global/about/solutionsforsociety/message.html.