ECMWF Supercomputer History

In order to run weather forecast models within a schedule that has reasonably short timeslots, powerful supercomputer systems are required.. The first version of the ECMWF weather forecasting model was developed on a Control Data Corporation 6600 computer from 1976 to 1978. Although the CDC6600 was one of the most powerful systems available at the time, the forecast model still needed 12 days to produce a 10-day forecast. However, this showed that provided a suitably powerful computer could be acquired, useful forecasts could be produced.