Porting AWIPS to Linux

The Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) has been a major contributor to the current AWIPS (Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System) deployed to Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) throughout the United States.The system was originally written for the Hewlett Packard platform and software was developed to take advantage of proprietary pieces of the hardware architecture.

With the advent of the Open Systems environment in the computer industry, and the acceptance of the LINUX operating system, Personal Computers (PC) are a viable alternative to the high-end, costly workstations deployed to the WFO. Current PCs have clock rates of 1Ghz, and support multiprocessor systems. These performance characteristics create an attractive alternative to the HP workstation.

FSL is currently porting the AWIPS code to the LINUX platform. This paper will discuss the technical issues involved with this task. This will include a high level discussion of the software modifications, the possible uses of a LINUX-based AWIPS workstation, and the current status of this effort.