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Paul Muzio, AHPCRC Support Infrastructure Director and vice president of Network Computer Services, Inc. (NCSI), the systems integrator and computing facilities manager for the AHPCRC, said, "As far as we are aware, this is the largest unstructured mesh simulation ever computed and the first to exceed a sustained teraflops." The complete simulation ran for 5 hours and required 665.7 gigabytes of memory. In addition to the fluid dynamics calculations, Muzio also reported that AHPCRC-NCSI staff has demonstrated that the Cray X1 performs exceptionally well as the computational platform for weather forecasting. The AHPCRC reported the following results: -- A 24-hour simulated weather forecast for the entire Continental United States (CONUS) at 5-kilometer resolution ran in 94 minutes, using 64 Cray X1 processors and the MM5 forecasting model. MM5 is used extensively within the United States and at many international locations. Current operational weather models that cover all of the United States are typically run at a resolution of about 10 kilometers. The 5-kilometer model requires approximately 8 times as much computation as the 10-kilometer model and four times as much memory (20 billion bytes). NCSI will demonstrate this at the AHPCRC booth (#304) at the Supercomputing 2003 conference in Phoenix, November 17-21, 2003. It will also be shown at the Cray booth (#925) -- NCSI ran a simulated 12-hour CONUS forecast at even higher resolution (2.5 kilometers) in about 3.5 hours on 120 Cray X1 processors. The simulated forecast was for September 18, 2003 and showed Hurricane Isabel making landfall. The 2.5-kilometer model requires about 64 times as much computation, and 16 times as much memory, as the typical 10-kilometer run. This, too, will be shown at the AHPCRC and Cray booths at the Supercomputing 2003 conference. "At 256 or fewer processors, the Cray X1 system is already outperforming other U.S. supercomputers with thousands of processors at customer sites, and is enabling leading researchers to advance the boundaries of science and engineering on real-world applications," said Cray Chairman and CEO Jim Rottsolk. "We believe the Cray X1 supercomputer's lead will increase substantially in larger system sizes." Rottsolk said the Cray X1 product reflects the company's strategy to deliver high-efficiency, high bandwidth supercomputer systems.