
The University of Edinburgh
The announcement last August by the UK’s then-new Labour Government that it was ending the £800 million supercomputer project to have built at Edinburgh University was greeted by the HPC community with consternation — particularly in Scotland.
But the project may have new life. Scottish Secretary Ian Murray suggested this week that the university is still “well placed” to build a system, according to a story in The National Scot.

Ian Murray
The controvery was rekindled earlier this week when the Labour Government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer released a national AI action plan the included the goal of enhancing the country’s computing capacity by 20x by the end of this decade, a plan that includes the addition of a new supercomputer.
According to the story in The National Scot, David Torrance, a member of the Scottish Parliament, said building the supercomputer outside of Scotland would be a “betrayal.”
However, Murray contended in a conversation with journalists this week that “the Edinburgh project was never axed and was in fact ‘paused,’” according to the publication. He also said Edinburgh University is “well placed” to deliver the project.
“’Edinburgh was specifically mentioned a number of times in the AI strategy that was announced by the Secretary of State this week,” Murray is reported to have said.