For those who follow supercomputing, weather forecasting is one area to watch for systems that are designed for maximum capability. Unlike the many other areas in HPC, GPUs are not endemic. There are a few exceptions but generally, they only exist because the underlying codes are GPU native.
Almost exactly two years ago, we talked with Todd Hutchinson, Director of Computational Meteorological Analysis and Prediction at The Weather Company, about how their early adoption of GPUs for a majority of their numerical weather prediction system. As we’ve described before, hardware acceleration is not the norm in weather modeling and prediction, due in large part to million-plus line legacy codes and physical element simulations that have been refined over decades.