India to have new supercomputer for weather forecasting by year end

• India is going to launch its brand new 18 petaFLOP supercomputer by the end of year 2023.
• It will be used for weather forecasting institutes in the country.

What are FLOPs in computing?

• FLOPs stands for "Floating Point Operations per Second."
• It is a measure of computing performance that quantifies the number of floating-point operations a computer system can perform in one second.
  • Floating-point operations are a certain kind of mathematical calculation using real numbers with fractional parts.
• It is especially used to measure the performance in the field of high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI).

What is a petaFLOP?

• Present-day computers hold significantly great computing powers.
• Thus, the metric of FLOPs is often denoted in giga (billions), tera (trillions), or PETA (quadrillions) of operations per second.
• Metric value of petaFLOP
  • A petaFLOP equals a thousand TFLOPs. One can also say that a petaFLOP is equal to 1015 FLOPs.

Are FLOPs the only metric to judge a computer’s performance?

• FLOPs is not the only factor determining the performance of a computing system.
• Memory bandwidth, latency, and other architectural features also play significant roles.
• However, FLOPs provide a valuable baseline for comparing the computational capabilities of different systems, especially in tasks where floating-point calculations dominate.

Is India already using petaFLOPs computers for weather forecasting?

• The NCMRWF houses ‘Mihir’, a 2.8 petaflop supercomputer, while the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, is home to ‘Pratyush’, a 4.0 petaflop supercomputer.
  • These were launched in 2018.

Benefits of the new supercomputer

• Improved Weather Forecasting
  • With its immense computational power, the supercomputer can process vast amounts of meteorological data, enabling more accurate and detailed weather forecasts.
  • It can handle complex models and simulations that take into account various atmospheric variables, ocean currents, land features etc., resulting in more reliable predictions.
  • The new supercomputer is expected to improve weather forecasts at the block level.
• Early Warning Systems
  • By rapidly analyzing real-time data and running high-resolution models, it is expected to predict cyclones with more accuracy and better lead time.
    • Lead time is the difference between a phenomenon being forecast and actually occurring.
  • Timely and accurate weather information plays a crucial role in disaster management.
• Better resolution
  • Presently, the existing system give forecasts with a 12-kilometre resolution. The new supercomputer will improve it to six-kilometre resolution.
  • The government’s aim is to achieve one-kilometre resolution forecasts.

Other benefits

• It is expected to provide ocean state forecasts, including marine water quality forecasts.
• It can contribute to climate modelling efforts, enabling scientists to study long-term climate trends, assess the impact of human activities, and explore potential future scenarios.
• Weather conditions greatly influence agricultural productivity. Hence, it will help in agricultural planning.