The supercomputer will enable the U.S. Navy to enhance its global-scale modeling and simulation capabilities, ensuring that the U.S. fleet will have the most accurate weather forecast information critical to naval operations.

"We are particularly pleased to acquire a nearly 3,000-processor system — the largest single system that we have ever fielded," said Cray Henry, director of the Defense Department's HPC Modernization Program.

The "operational availability and resilience of these new systems will be critical elements of our support to the Navy and the Department of Defense," said Steve Adamec of the Naval Oceanographic Office's.

The supercomputer consists of eServer p655 systems connected with IBM's clustering technology. Each of the new high-performance computing systems is based on POWER4+ microprocessors, and uses the AIX operating system.

The naval office supports some of the world's most computationally intensive R&D projects, known as "Challenge Projects", representing critical DoD research projects. They include new military aircraft, ship and vehicle designs, improved missile and projectile design as well as advanced research in global high-resolution meteorology and oceanography.