[photopress:IT_IBM_p575.jpg,full,alignright]The thought that the IBM-made supercomputer called p575 (looking extremely boring in our picture but supercomputers are like that) bought by China for weather forecasting at the 2008 Olympics could be used for military purposes after games is based on some false premises. China already has the ability to domestically produce machines that run at faster speeds and has already demonstrated this ability.
In 2004, Dawning Information Industry, a Chinese computer manufacturer, completed its 4000A supercomputer, which was the tenth fastest machine in the world at the time with a maximum operational speed of 11.2 teraflops compared to 9.8 teraflops for the IBM System p575. As you well know, but it had slipped your mind just for the moment, a teraflop is a measure of computing speed equal to one trillion floating point operations per second.
In August 2007, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau (BMB) purchased the IBM System p575 supercomputer specifically for weather forecasting at the 2008 games.
The system is capable of analyzing information from a 44,000 square kilometer (about 17,000 square mile) area to provide hourly weather forecasts for each square kilometer. The 80-node, 9.8 teraflop machine is reportedly 1,000 times faster than the computer used during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Sin Jisong, chief forecaster at BMB, claimed that weather is very unpredictable in Beijing and IBM researcher Zaphiris Christidis reported that the system will be the most advanced one ever used by an Olympic host.
Which does not make it the fastest computer although it is probably the faster computer ever used for weather forecasting.
The Chinese government is very serious about getting the weather forecasts for the Olympics right as it has, in addition to purchasing the IBM System p575, launched a satellite to recognize changes in weather and the Beijing Weather Modification Office has attempted to manually induce rainfall using chemicals, including silver iodide, to make water droplets in clouds grow faster and thus rain sooner. The Beijing Weather Modification Office shoots shells containing the chemicals into clouds from the ground or dropped into them by planes.
Rain control is seen as being vitally important because the Chinese Olympic Committee will hold the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, as well as numerous other events, in open-air venues, including the $500 million Beijing Olympic Stadium.
Spending a few million dollars for accurate weather prediction is likely justified by the reported total of $40 billion that China is investing into the 2008 Olympics, which Chinese Olympic Committee Vice President Tu Mingde says ‘surpasses the importance of sports itself.’
Source: ISN Security Watch