Today, 22 December 2008, Member States’ usage of the ECMWF High Performance Computer Facility (HPCF) resources has reached a new milestone.
The usage for 2008 has surpassed 100 million units. This corresponds to 7.5 million CPU hours on the HPCF POWER5+ systems (see here for a description of these systems). The previous milestone (over 10 million units) occurred in the fourth quarter of 2004.
The Centre’s HPCF is at the core of ECMWF’s operational and research activities. 50% of ECMWF’s high performance computer resources are allocated to research and 25% to producing forecasts. ECMWF Member States have access to our computer systems, and 25% of the computer resources are reserved to the activities of the Member States, such as developing and running operational applications linked to ECMWF’s forecasting system. Scientists in the Member States access the Centre's main systems via network links and carry out research in areas ranging from improving numerical weather forecasting techniques to climatological and environmental studies of the atmosphere and oceans.