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New supercomputer at the German Climate Computing Center in Hamburg
In Hamburg, Germany, the Federal Minister for Education and Research, Dr. Annette Schavan and Hamburg's Mayor Ole von Beust today inaugurated one of the world's most advanced supercomputer.
The new €35 million euros climate supercomputer named "Blizzard" of the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) provides more accurate predictions of future climate change.
With a peak supercomputing speed of 158 teraflops, the new high-performance computer is about 60 times more powerful than its predecessor.
Blizzard will provide critical data on global warming for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the international U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this week.
"The new Hamburg Climate supercomputer is an outstanding example of the German top position in climate research," said Federal Minister Dr. Annette Schavan.
"Hamburg is the mecca of global climate modeling, because we provide not only scientific institutions like the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and Climate Campus, including a globally unique computing capacity," said Prof. Dr. Thomas Ludwig (48) the scientific and technical manager at the DKRZ in Hamburg since May 2009.
Ludwig, a specialist in storage systems and energy efficiency, and his team will make the supercomputer even more efficient and sustainable.
"The new supercomputer for climate research, for which we have specially prepared a building in Hamburg that meets the highest requirements in order to carry out far-reaching and realistic climate and environmental simulations. Only when we know the interactions of the global climate, we are able to make the right decisions. The 'Climate Campus Hamburg' is an internationally visible and is unique in Germany, focusing on climate and ocean research, we are pursuing together with our northern German neighbors," said Hamburg's Mayor Ole von Beust of the new building.
Blizzard is capable of storing more than 60 petabytes of data, representing 60,000 TB, approximately 13 million DVDs, 56 robotic arms operate the 65,000 tape cassettes, which are stored on the world's largest climate data archive. It weighs a total of 35 tons with more than 50 kilometers of cables.
Blizzard is allocated half of the time to the Max Planck Society, the University of Hamburg, the GKSS Research Center Geesthacht, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine research. Approximately 100 scientific groups from all parts of Germany will share the rest of the computation time.
