Atos has signed a new €42m (US$47m) four-year contract with French national meteorological service, Météo-France, to supply two supercomputers based on its latest BullSequana XH2000 technology.
The new systems will multiply Météo-France’s computing power by more than five, compared to its current solution, enabling it to achieve several scientific breakthroughs in weather forecasting. Each new supercomputer is capable of processing more than 10 million billion operations per second and are amongst the most powerful meteorological supercomputers in the world.
This increase in computing power enables Météo-France to provide its clients with enhanced and more precise and reliable forecasting information.
The BullSequana XH2000 boasts optimum energy-efficiency with its 100% highly-efficient water-cooled patented DLC (Direct Liquid Cooling) solution, which minimizes global energy consumption by using warm water up to 40°C.
“We’re really excited to be working again with Météo-France to boost its computing capacity with our BullSequana XH2000 supercomputers,” said Pierre Barnabé, SVP, head of big data and security at Atos. “Equipped with the latest generation processors and accelerators, our BullSequana architecture offers Météo-France a combined peak performance of 20 petaflops to deliver even more precise results. It is also highly-energy efficient and minimizes global energy consumption.”
The first BullSequana XH2000 supercomputer will be installed at the Centre National de Calcul de Météo-France in Toulouse from November and made available for aptitude and regular service verification phases from January 2020. The second will be installed at Espace Clément Ader (Toulouse Montaudran) from May 2020 and will enter the test phase from July 2020. These two computers will be used in the second half of 2020 for operational weather forecasting and research in atmospheric, ocean and climate sciences.