A study on potential open systems compliant processors for oceanographic and atmospheric systems

This paper is intended to be of interest to both the oceanographic and meteorological community. Its purpose is to report on a study performed in 1998 to evaluate hardware alternatives for the Open Radar Product Generator (ORPG) subsystem of the Weather Surveillance System-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) of the National Weather Service (NWS), which is a line organization located within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The ORPG is the main computer producing meteorological products for the WSR-88D. These products have both oceanographic and meteorological applications. This study concerned the eventual replacement of the present prototype ORPG with a different high-end personal computer (PC), workstation, or server of equivalent capability. As part of this effort, a process was identified which allowed for the identification of several more cost effective, distributed environment, standards-based, open systems compliant candidate platforms which would replace the existing prototype ORPG. Several other systems which were evaluated included SunSPARC, Hewlett-Packard, and many other types of platforms. A total of four candidate systems were finally recommended. This paper addresses three major goals. The first is to establish the analysis and process methodology which would lead to the final candidate selections to replace the ORPG. The second is to summarize the evaluation of present market trends in Intel versus non-Intel based microprocessor platforms in the area of high performance computing. The third is to project this effort as a case study of how to select either a personal computer or workstation as the main computing platform for any major oceanographic or meteorological system under development.