Supercomputer heralds improved climate forecasting.


Posted 9h   hours ago, updated 4h  hours ago



https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-23/australia-new-supercomputer-a-tribute-to-ngunnawal-tradition/12381750

Researchers are now making use of the Australian National University's new supercomputer, Gadi, one of the most powerful of its kind and the most powerful in the southern hemisphere.
Key points:

    The artwork featured on Australia's new supercomputer is by Ngunnawal artist Lynnice Church
    With enhanced processing capabilities, Gadi offers hope for vastly improved research
    The Bureau of Meteorology hopes to use Gadi to better predict bushfire behaviour

Gadi, based at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), was unveiled this week after a few months of early operation, described by the university as a "recognised powerhouse in the global supercomputing ranking".

The supercomputer, which operates 24/7 for 360 days a year, uses the same amount of electricity as it takes to power a medium-sized suburb.


Among the more than 5,000 individuals using the supercomputer — remotely from their offices — will be researchers from the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and Geoscience Australia.

Both CSIRO and Geoscience Australia will use the supercomputer to improve their systems aimed at predicting extreme weather patterns, including fires, earthquakes, tsunamis and cyclones.

The CSIRO's executive director of Digital, National Facilities and Collections, Dave Williams, said having an asset like Gadi was "critical" for predicting Australia's future.

He said its computational models would contribute to the CSIRO's Decadal Climate Forecasting Project to produce "near-term" climate forecasts.

    "Gadi will enable our work in Earth sciences including climate, land, water and fire modelling," Dr Williams said.

"The data that Gadi will process and analyse is collected here on Earth as well as by an increasing number of satellites orbiting our planet."

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/australias-gadi-supercomputer-recognized-on-top500-list/


Technical specs

Gadi contains a total of 145,152 CPU cores, 567 Terabytes of memory and 640 GPUs.

    3,024 nodes each containing two 24-core Intel Xeon Scalable ‘Cascade Lake’ processors and 192 Gigabytes of memory.
        including 50 nodes each offering 1.5 Terabytes of Intel Optane DC Persistent memory.
    160 nodes each containing four Nvidia V100 GPUs and two 24-core Intel Xeon Scalable ‘Cascade Lake’ processors.
    Linking the storage systems and Gadi is Mellanox Technologies’ latest generation HDR InfiniBand technology in a Dragonfly+ topology, capable of transferring data at up to 200 Gb/s.
    The storage sub-systems are NetApp enterprise class storage arrays, linked together in a DDN Lustre parallel file system.
    Altair’s PBSPro software optimises job scheduling and workload management.
    Gadi uses the latest version of the CentOS 8 operating system.

Supercomputers are great - they can make mistakes faster than ever before.  :)

Captain Nemo wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:19pm:

Supercomputers are great - they can make mistakes faster than ever before.  :)

I thought climate science and global warming was settled -
no more debate allowed? -

if so then why do they need this supercomputer?

Bobby. wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:31pm:

Captain Nemo wrote on Jun 23rd, 2020 at 2:19pm: Supercomputers are great - they can make mistakes faster than ever before.  :) I thought climate science and global warming was settled - no more debate allowed? - if so then why do they need this supercomputer?

"Both CSIRO and Geoscience Australia will use the supercomputer to improve their systems aimed at predicting extreme weather patterns, including fires, earthquakes, tsunamis and cyclones."

Bobby. wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:31pm:

I thought climate science and global warming was settled - no more debate allowed? -

Global warming is settled in the sense that the experts agree it's happening.

Of course, there also are plenty of wannabes and fringe nutters who delude themselves that they are a legitimate part of the scientific debate and who believe that the scientists are either hugely mistaken or conspiring to commit a massive hoax.

Physicists still study gravity. We know how plants grow yet agronomy is still studied looking for new techniques.

Robot wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:47pm:

Bobby. wrote on Jun 23rd, 2020 at 2:31pm: I thought climate science and global warming was settled - no more debate allowed? - Global warming is settled in the sense that the experts agree it's happening. Of course, there also are plenty of wannabes and fringe nutters who delude themselves that they are a legitimate part of the scientific debate and who believe that the scientists are either hugely mistaken or conspiring to commit a massive hoax.

Should look at Twitter sometime!

Robot wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:47pm:

Bobby. wrote on Jun 23rd, 2020 at 2:31pm: I thought climate science and global warming was settled - no more debate allowed? - Global warming is settled in the sense that the experts agree it's happening. Of course, there also are plenty of wannabes and fringe nutters who delude themselves that they are a legitimate part of the scientific debate and who believe that the scientists are either hugely mistaken or conspiring to commit a massive hoax.

You mean people like Al Gore and Monk?

People like Dubyne and those who follow him.

People talking solemnly of “cooling since 2005” (or whatever date.)

Jovial Monk wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:55pm:

People like Dubyne.

David DuByne never indulged in any debate -
he just gave evidence and didn't answer questions.
That's why I stopped posting his videos as
this is a 2 way street.

Bobby. wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:51pm:

Robot wrote on Jun 23rd, 2020 at 2:47pm: Bobby. wrote on Jun 23rd, 2020 at 2:31pm: I thought climate science and global warming was settled - no more debate allowed? - Global warming is settled in the sense that the experts agree it's happening. Of course, there also are plenty of wannabes and fringe nutters who delude themselves that they are a legitimate part of the scientific debate and who believe that the scientists are either hugely mistaken or conspiring to commit a massive hoax. You mean people like Al Gore and Monk?

Jovial Monk wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:55pm:

People like Dubyne and those who follow him. People talking solemnly of “cooling since 2005” (or whatever date.)

Al Gore is not an expert on climate science.
David Dubyne is not an expert on climate science.

Neither are capable of contributing to scientific debate because they aren't doing climate science.


Bobby. wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2020 at 2:57pm:

Jovial Monk wrote on Jun 23rd, 2020 at 2:55pm: People like Dubyne. David DuByne never indulged in any debate - he just gave evidence and didn't answer questions. That's why I stopped posting his videos as this is a 2 way street.

"Notice me, senpai!"

dear Robot,
I notice you and your scientific contributions are most welcome.

There is only one golden rule with computers super or otherwise.

SH!T IN - SH!T OUT

The end results it presents are only as good as the information it has been fed.

Ajax wrote on Jul 18^th, 2020 at 9:25am:

There is only one golden rule with computers super or otherwise. SH!T IN - SH!T OUT The end results it presents are only as good as the information it has been fed.

That is true.
Still - the results from this new computer will be interesting.

The results will only be that with the same input they make the same errors faster.

lee wrote on Jul 18^th, 2020 at 4:01pm:

The results will only be that with the same input they make the same errors faster.

More processing power means that more variables can be
introduced into the equations.

Bobby. wrote on Jul 18^th, 2020 at 4:07pm:

More processing power means that more variables can be introduced into the equations.

And more variables means more options of choosing the output you want. ;)

lee wrote on Jul 18^th, 2020 at 4:40pm:

Bobby. wrote on Jul 18th, 2020 at 4:07pm: More processing power means that more variables can be introduced into the equations. And more variables means more options of choosing the output you want. ;)

Let's see if they come up with anything interesting?

NASA has supercomputers that can predict earthquakes up to 5 years into the future through the modeling of tectonic movement. The NASA team predicted the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 down to the two week period of December. They were roughly right. Australian seismologists were on an elevated alert for that period in our region. When the earthquake took place, our team of 'experts' let the Indonesians know about the likelihood of a considerable tsunami impact for the region. The Indonesians were like (*Scottish accent*) "Nah, it'll be fine". And then they lost tens of thousands of Indonesians in that region.

lee wrote on Jul 18^th, 2020 at 4:01pm:

The results will only be that with the same input they make the same errors faster.

Yeah. But if you put in the right inputs, you will come up with the right answers faster. Satellites can count how many people are walking around outside and give a rough estimation about how many people are in a region or where they are congregating. Satellites can pick up the atmospheric weather conditions of the day and be able to make rough predictions of what a week's weather forecast could be.

But, if you think a satellite can send its information to a Pentium II computer and allow the computer to run its calculations without crashing, you are sadly mistaken. Even the Spierig brothers could not make a B-grade horror movie about zombies without having their Pentium computers crash trying to make the special effects scenes.

I figure we can have the computer technicians put together a good supercomputer and let the climate researchers put together a good set of data for them to extrapolate future variable weather forecasts.

Then there are quantum computers:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20928294/google-quantum-supremacy-sycamore-computer-qubit-milestone



Google confirms ‘quantum supremacy’ breakthrough


47 comments

Its research paper is now available to read in its entirety
By Jon Porter@JonPorty Oct 23, 2019, 6:31am EDT


Google says that its 54-qubit Sycamore processor was able to perform a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken the world’s most powerful supercomputer 10,000 years. That would mean the calculation, which involved generated random numbers, is essentially impossible on a traditional, non-quantum computer.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZNEzzDcllU