Elodie Collins
The Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have awarded General Dynamics Information Technology $100 million in funding to build a new high-performance computer. Called Rhea, the upcoming HPC is expected to advance weather prediction, NOAA said on Tuesday.
Michael Morgan, assistant secretary of commerce for environmental observation and prediction, revealed that Rhea will also give NOAA computing capacity to expand climate-related research and support other functions.
“The new system will strengthen NOAA’s exploration and application of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, which will ultimately improve weather, ocean and climate forecasting, ecosystem modeling and the use of satellite Earth observations to understand climate changes,” he commented.
Rhea will bring NOAA’s total research and development HPC capacity from 35 petaflops to 43 petaflops. It will be equipped with graphics processing units that will enable AI/ML applications in marine life monitoring, weather forecasting and modeling of certain environmental phenomena such as atmospheric rivers.
The upcoming GDIT HPC will be housed at the NOAA Environmental Security Computing Center in Fairmont, West Virginia. According to NOAA, there is room for additional modular data centers that would further expand HPC capacity in the future.
The funding was awarded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
