Member Article

Supercomputer research centre launched in North of England

A supercomputer facility has been launched for university and industry researchers in the North of England.

Established by the N8 Research Partnership, a group made up of eight Northern universities, the centre now houses the most powerful computer in the UK and will boost research in both academia and private sector businesses.

The centre, which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), will allow researchers to build realistic models using vast amounts of data and make complex analyses into a range of areas including life science, energy, digital media and aerospace.

Business partners of the universities in Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York will all have access to the facility, which has been named the N8 High Performance Computing centre (N8 HPC).

The £3.25m site is now home to supercomputer, Polaris, and will offer high-performance computing that has not previously been available on such a scale to researchers in the North.

Polaris is one of the 250 most powerful computers in the world, and is equivalent to 500,000 iPads when running at its peak.

Operators of N8 HPC hope the facility will reduce barriers to computing by allowing companies access along with consultancy and ‘e-infrastructure’ training.

The site will be jointly run by the University of Manchester and the University of Leeds, where the supercomputer is based.

Professor David Hogg, N8 HPC Co-Director and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation and Research, University of Leeds, commented: “N8 HPC creates a further opportunity for even greater collaboration between universities and businesses, as well as enabling deeper partnerships between institutions.

“By providing support and expertise to maximise the opportunities that the N8 HPC offers, we aim to make it easier for industry across a wide range of sectors to access high performance computing, enabling existing university-industry collaborations to be further developed and new partnerships to be forged.”

One business keen to take advantage of the facility is Sheffield-based designer and manufacturer of computer cooling liquid systems, Iceotope.

Richard Barrington, business development director for the firm, said: “By being able to tap into multi-disciplinary knowledge and expertise and having a ‘critical friend’ in the shape of the University of Leeds, we have been able to design engineer and deliver one of the most energy-efficient integrated computer cooling systems there is.

“SMEs should be making more use of the specialist skills and knowledge that exist within our universities to help them tackle highly complex problems.”

Training will be provided to university business partners across all sectors through a series of modular workshops and online courses, which companies will be able to take on according to their specific needs.

University of Manchester’s Professor Chris Taylor, N8 HPC Co-Director, said: “The creation of N8 HPC, with one of the UK’s leading high-performance computing facilities, will underpin world-leading research across our universities, and enhance our ability to engage with industry to solve important real-world problems.

“The facility will allow us to tackle more complex modelling and ‘big data’ challenges, whilst the academic and support networks we are building around it, will make high-performance computing accessible to a wider range of university and industry researchers.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .