This layered approach provides SMS users ease of use and minimal impact to their code, as well as portability and high performance.
Data files written by SMS provide high performance and are also portable.
Further, since it is implemented as a layered set of routines, machine-dependent optimizations are invisible to the user. The Nearest Neighbor Tool is used to code regular grid-based weather prediction models for portable execution on parallel, sequential, and vector computers with minimum impact to the original code. The PPP is a Fortran source to source translator that further simplifies the code conversion process. SST provides support required for spectral transform models. Computer architectures supported by the SMS include IBM SP2, Cray T3E, SGI Origin 2000, Fujitsu VPP, Sun E10000, H-P Exemplar, Linux clusters with Myrinet, Unix workstations, and SMPs.