Commodity supercomputing, was: Re: NDAs Re: [Beowulf] Nvidia, cuda, tesla and... where's my double floating point?

[Gerry Creager]

I was at the WRF conf. last week.  A colleague from the Netherlands was 
lamenting that he couldn't get ECMWF data (I don't recall the annual 
cost/year but it was huge).  NOAA/NCEP GFS data are available via FTP 
and regular enough to allow really simple scripting, as well as other 
methods.  I don't understand why folks wouldn't use these data.

As for competing, if our companies are not sufficiently technically 
astute, should we be protecting them from European companies, just 
because the data are free?

Toon Moene wrote:
> Gerry Creager wrote:
> 
>> In the US, at least for academic institutions and hobbyists, surface 
>> and upper air observations of the sort you describe are generally 
>> available for incorporation into models for data assimilation.  Models 
>> are generally forced and bounded using model data from other 
>> atmospheric models, also available.  As I understand it from 
>> colleagues in Europe, getting similar data over there is more 
>> problemmatical.
> 
> Exactly !  And what happens in Europe is that companies take the freely 
> available US data, use it to compete with US companies, and disregard 
> the (meteorological superior) ECMWF data, because it is not free.
> 
> A colleague of mine held some very unpopular talks in Reading, England, 
> about this (according to his figures, 99 % of the meteorological data 
> used in Europe originates from the US).
> 

-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843