Photo: Supplied / James Bass
Science agency NIWA has unveiled a new supercomputer with triple the computing power of its current three supercomputers combined.
Housed in a secure data facility north of Auckland, the supercomputer will be able to run complex climate and weather models much faster than anything available to scientific researchers within New Zealand at the moment.
Science Minister Judith Collins cut a glossy white ribbon on a row of black cabinets similar to ones that will house the supercomputer at CDC's secure data centre in Silverdale, north of Auckland.
Although the supercomputer isn't actually ready to use yet, yesterday's event was a chance to show off what it will be able to do - and the secure environment it will be housed in.
NIWA chief executive John Morgan says once it is running it will far surpass anything currently available to the agency's weather forecasters, freshwater modellers and other scientists.
"It's going to be up to three times more powerful than the existing supercomputer capability of NIWA, and the existing capability does three thousand trillion calculations a second," he said.
"For example, we run a weather and climate model for New Zealand every six hours, down to a 1.5km scale."
"It's every six hours because it takes that long to run it. The new supercomputer will do it in three hours."
Andrew Kirker of CDC said the CDC data centre housing the computer was designed to withstand earthquakes, power cuts and even intruders who might try to enter the building. Some of the walls are 80cm thick.
But although the supercomputer may be secure, the same can't be said of the jobs of some of the scientists who would have been most likely to use it.
NIWA's small, highly skilled team of global climate modellers were made redundant this year in a round of job cuts axing around 90 roles in total.
Nationally in the science sector, between 350 and 360 specialist science jobs have gone in recent months, both at Crown Research Institutes such as NIWA and the wider sector.
Morgan said NIWA still had plenty of people capable of running climate models on the computer, which will also be used to model earthquake risk, fresh water and other things. He highlighted the agency's investment in AI data specialists.
Morgan said NIWA had restructured in response to drop in revenue including from the end of the 10-year National Science Challenges paid for by the Government.
"Niwa's restructuring has finished, it was to deal with a particular issue and we've dealt with it. What's really exciting is the next stage is bigger and better hence the investment in the supercomputer and NIWA's investment in a large pool of AI data scientists," said Morgan.
Asked if the science sector's pain was over, Judith Collins said job cuts were operational decisions for Crown owned research companies like NIWA (called CRIs), and said the National Science Challenges were always due to end after 10 years.
As yet, nothing has been announced to replace them.
"It is really important for every CRI to rightsize get ready for the future an understand that we need to be very productive. We don't have any money that can be [used] for people's personal projects unless it's going to have outcomes for the taxpayer," said Collins.
Former chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman is preparing advice on the future structure of the science sector for the Government.
