The National Weather Service completed an operational test on the use of high performance Personal Computer (PC) and open source Linux technology to replace the current Hewlett Packard Communications Processors (HP CP) at the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) field sites during the Spring of 2002. The demonstration involved 15 test sites and 5 additional control sites. In this test, the reliability and timeliness of products passing through the CP were assessed and the impact of the new hardware in the system was monitored. The Product Availability Monitoring System (PAMS) was used to monitor the 700,000 - 900,000 products per day flowing through each new CP. The test results were very positive. Consequently, the new Linux CP's were kept operational at the selected test sites after the demonstration and the plan to replace all remaining HP CP's with the new Linux CP's is underway. This paper summarizes the results of the test.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the National Weather Service.