UKRI Awards ARCHER2 Supercomputer Services Contract

UKRI has awarded contracts to run elements of the next national supercomputer, ARCHER2, which will represent a significant step forward in capability for the UK’s science community. ARCHER2 is provided by UKRI, EPCC, Cray (an HPE company) and the University of Edinburgh. “ARCHER2 will be a Cray Shasta system with an estimated peak performance of 28 PFLOP/s. The machine will have 5,848 compute nodes, each with dual AMD EPYC Zen2 (Rome) 64 core CPUs at 2.2GHz, giving 748,544 cores in total and 1.57 PBytes of total system memory.”

EPSRC Recognizes Young Scientists using ARCHER Supercomputing Facility

Today EPSRC in the UK announced the 10 winners of the recent ARCHER Best-Use Travel Competition. The competition aimed to identify the best scientific use of ARCHER, the UK’s national supercomputing facility, within the arena of the engineering and physical sciences. “As we see the increasing need for high performance computing to tackle today’s complex scientific questions, we recognize the need to encourage today’s young researchers to bring their skills to the world,” said Dr. Eddie Clarke, EPSRC’s Contract Manager for ARCHER. “The winners of these awards have shown ability, enthusiasm and real skill in their research and these prizes will help them work together with partners overseas to benefit science in the UK.”

UK to Launch Six HPC Centers

The UK is launching six HPC centers this month. Funded by £20 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) the centres are located around the UK, at the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Exeter, and Oxford, Loughborough University, and UCL. “These centres will enable new discoveries, drive innovation and allow new insights into today’s scientific challenges. They are important because they address an existing gulf in capability between local university systems and the UK National Supercomputing Service ARCHER,” said Professor Philip Nelson, EPSRC’s Chief Executive.

Cray to Add Intel Xeon Phi to Archer Supercomputing Service in the UK

EPSRC and Cray have signed an agreement to add a Cray XC40 Development System with Intel Xeon Phi processors to ARCHER, the UK National Supercomputing Service. “The new Development system will have a very similar environment to the main ARCHER system, including Cray’s Aries interconnect, operating system and Cray tools, meaning that interested users will enjoy a straightforward transition.”

Alan Turing Institute Hits the Ground Running for HPC & Data Science

The Alan Turing Institute is the UK’s national institute for data science. It has marked its first few days of operations with the announcement of its new director, the confirmation of £10 million of research funding from Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a research partnership with GCHQ, collaboration with the EPSRC and Cray, and the commencement of its first research activities.

Rolls-Royce Joins JISC Industrial Supercomputing Initiative

Today JISC in the U.K. announced that Rolls-Royce is the first company to join its industrial supercomputing initiative. Designed to break down barriers between industry and academia, JISC will provide Rolls-Royce with easy access to supercomputing equipment at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) HPC Midlands.

Five University Partners Line Up With Alan Turing Institute

The universities of Cambridge Edinburgh, Oxford, Warwick and UCL have been chosen to lead the Alan Turing Institute, which will promote advanced mathematics, computer science, and big data in the UK.