It's official, the Cray C90 supercomputer really smokes. Well, it's worse than that actually - we're talking seriously hot technology here. The US National Centers for Environmental Prediction published a sad note to field operatives today concluding that the C90, which caught fire on September 27th, is most definitely a write-off. This after SGI engineers arrived and shook their heads, and after a second opinion was sought. They all agreed, the Cray was Croaked. The immediate effect is that "objective guidance beyond 10 days in the future will be unavailable for the next several weeks. Therefore, there is no objective basis for making forecasts at the 8-14 day range." So, anyone out there have a spare Cray or comparable Beowulf cluster machine just sitting around compatible with the software used to do atmospheric modeling while the NCEP/NWS awaits replacement Cray CPU horsepower? ®