Case Study: National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) achieves over 3× faster global weather & climate prediction with Altair PBS Professional and Accelerator Plus

Predicting Global Weather & Climate - New NCAR HPC System Expected to Achieve Over 3x Faster Performance

NCAR, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, needed a next‑generation HPC platform to advance global weather and climate prediction and research by replacing its Cheyenne supercomputer. To meet growing demands for higher performance and more efficient job scheduling, NCAR selected a new HPE Cray EX system and integrated workload-management software from Altair, including Altair PBS Professional and Altair Accelerator Plus.

Altair provided the scheduling and workload‑management layer on the HPE Cray EX, enabling efficient use of the system’s mix of CPU and GPU nodes. The new NCAR system is expected to deliver about 3.5x more processing power (up to 19.87 petaflops) and over 3x faster performance for modeling and analysis, with Altair’s PBS Professional and Accelerator Plus driving improved throughput and resource utilization.