ECMWF is both a research institute and a 24/7 operational service, producing and disseminating medium- and extended-range weather forecasts to its member states, worldwide commercial customers and international organisations (e.g. the UN/WFP, IAEA, etc). To that effect, ECMWF operates a supercomputer facility that is one of the largest of its type, and an associated perpetual archive of meteorological data. Furthermore, ECMWF pursues scientific and technical collaborations with satellite agencies, the European meteorological community and the world climate and weather prediction communities, as well as providing services for the European Commission. The principal objectives of ECMWF are (1) the development of numerical methods for medium-range weather forecasting; (2) the preparation, on a regular basis, of medium-range weather forecasts for distribution to the meteorological services; (3) scientific and technical research directed at the improvement of these forecasts; (4) the collection and storage of appropriate meteorological data.
Role in NEXTGenIO
ECMWF leads WP3, bringing its long experience in developing numerical weather prediction applications and running time-critical HPC operational services to help co-design of NEXTGenIO architecture and the integration of its systemware with the application layer. Special focus is on resilience to failure, scaling I/O transfers to multi-PB/day and portable systemware APIs. ECMWF also contributes significantly to the final assessment of NEXTGenIO by developing the I/O workflow simulator and adapting an I/O server stack for benchmark comparisons.