虛擬氣候

????隨著科學(xué)家們?cè)噲D預(yù)測(cè)全球氣候變暖的潛在影響，建立更佳的氣候模型變得愈加重要,。超級(jí)計(jì)算機(jī)對(duì)于我們理解大氣變化已經(jīng)不可或缺,。“我們?cè)陔娨暽峡吹降臍庀箢A(yù)報(bào)影像需要在超級(jí)計(jì)算機(jī)上渲染數(shù)小時(shí),?！庇ミ_(dá)（Nvidia）加速計(jì)算部門(mén)總經(jīng)理蘇米特?古普塔說(shuō)。（超級(jí)計(jì)算機(jī)泰坦就采用了英偉達(dá)芯片,。）但如今最頂級(jí)的超級(jí)計(jì)算機(jī)也仍然無(wú)法實(shí)現(xiàn)研究人員的目標(biāo),。如果將整個(gè)地球看作一個(gè)影像，現(xiàn)在最頂級(jí)的超級(jí)計(jì)算機(jī)也只能渲染到14平方公里尺寸的像素,。而借助百萬(wàn)兆級(jí)計(jì)算機(jī),，精度將能縮小到1平方公里。這意味著,，科學(xué)家們將能看到從小到每朵云形成到每次洋流對(duì)氣候帶來(lái)的影響,。

Virtual climate

????Building better climate models is becoming more important, as scientists work to predict the potential effects of a warming planet. Supercomputers are already integral to our understanding of atmospheric changes. "Whenever you see forecasters on TV, that weather movie took hours and hours to render on a supercomputer," says Sumit Gupta, a general manager at Nvidia's accelerated computing unit. (Nvidia's chips help power Titan.) But the best supercomputers today fall short of researchers' goals. If you think of the globe as an image, the best supercomputers can only render pixels the size of 14 square kilometers. An exascale computer could bring that down to one square kilometer. The effect? Scientists could see the impact of minutely detailed climate factors such as individual cloud formations and ocean eddies.