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Supercomputers To The Rescue!

With high performance computing tools, Singapore is bolstering its response to emerging threats such as infectious diseases and climate change.

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Forging ahead with the battle
NSCC is now building a powerful new tool as a successor to ASPIRE 1 to fortify Singapore’s disaster resilience and response to emerging threats. The S$40 million system will be capable of up to 10 petaFLOPS of computing capacity, eight times that of ASPIRE 1.

Set to be operational in 2022, the next-generation supercomputer will be built with Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Cray EX supercomputer components, with close to 900 CPU and GPU computing nodes and more than 100,000 computing cores.

Researchers at the CCRS are eager to use the machine to estimate the extent and effects of changing rainfall patterns and sea level rise. The new resource will also help refine climate forecasts for Singapore, which barely registers on global climate models because of its small size.

According to the team at CCRS, the system is set to run what is called a regional climate model that can help enhance predictions of large-scale climate variability across Asia.
Barker added that larger supercomputers can accommodate more sophisticated parameters, such as cloud-aerosol models, which are suspensions of fine particles in the air. These can also provide analytics at higher resolution, zooming into nitty-gritty details over more localized contexts.

Whether in weather forecasting or pandemic predictions driven by historical data, HPC applications are gearing up to combat emerging threats and weed out uncertainties. By providing more detailed risk projections and accurate assessments, supercomputing is in a prime position to direct the right interventions to mitigate damage and respond to hazards in real time—creating a safer and more resilient Singapore.

This article was first published in the print version of Supercomputing Asia, January 2022.

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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine. Photo ollustration: Oi Keat Lam/Asian Scientist Magazine.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

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    • #A*STAR #Artificial Intelligence #Centre for Climate Research Singapore #Climate Science #Environmental Health Institute Singapore #Institute of High Performance Computing #Nanyang Technological University #National Environmental Agency Meteorological Service Singapore #National Supercomputing Centre Singapore #National University of Singapore #Singapore #Supercomputing Asia #Tan Tock Seng Hospital

    Tim Hornyak

    Tim Hornyak is a Canadian writer based in Tokyo, Japan, who has worked in journalism for more than 20 years. He has written extensively about travel, food, technology, science, culture and business in Japan, as well as Japanese inventors, roboticists and Nobel Prize-winning scientists. He is the author of Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots and has contributed to several Lonely Planet travel guidebooks. He has lived in Tokyo for more than 15 years.

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