Japan Meteorological Agency Enhances Weather Forecasting with Intel oneAPI

As extreme weather events become increasingly frequent, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) has upgraded its infrastructure with a next-generation supercomputer. Powered by Intel® Xeon® CPU Max 9480 processors and optimized with Intel® oneAPI, the JMA has significantly improved the accuracy and speed of its weather forecasts, which are critical for predicting typhoons and heavy rainfall.

The JMA is Japan’s leading authority on meteorological, hydrological, and seismic monitoring and forecasting. As typhoons and extreme weather events intensify, the agency must continuously refine its numerical weather prediction (NWP) models to deliver accurate data to authorities and the public.

In 2024, the JMA deployed its 11th-generation supercomputer, developed by Fujitsu and powered by Intel Xeon CPU Max 9480 processor with 64 GB of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) per socket. To maximize performance and efficiency, the agency leveraged Intel oneAPI, an open, unified programming model that optimizes high-performance computing (HPC) across diverse architectures.

Intel oneAPI: A Key Optimization for Weather Forecasting

To fully harness these new capabilities, the JMA integrated Intel oneAPI and Intel-optimized libraries, enhancing efficiency and computational resource management.

By using oneAPI and the optimizations of Intel Xeon Max processors, the JMA has achieved:

• Improved typhoon and extreme precipitation forecasting.
• Reduced weather model simulation times.
• Up to 80% fewer nodes required for certain workloads.

Real-World Impact on Disaster Prevention

The JMA’s tests demonstrate that the new Intel Xeon CPU Max-powered supercomputers have significantly accelerated and refined weather forecasts. The integration of oneAPI and HBM ensures more efficient processing of large-scale meteorological data, which is essential for numerical weather prediction.

With this modernization, the JMA strengthens its ability to anticipate natural disasters and issue early warnings, helping to protect lives and infrastructure.

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