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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/P020267/1
Title: EPCC Tier 2 HPC Service
Principal Investigator: Parsons, Professor M
Other Investigators:
Kerr, Professor WJ Gryce, Ms CA Real, Dr A N
Simpson, Dr AD McIntosh-Smith, Professor SN
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre
Organisation: University of Edinburgh
Scheme: Standard Research - NR1
Starts: 01 November 2016 Ends: 30 April 2021 Value (£): 2,400,000
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
24 Aug 2016 RI Tier 2 Panel Meeting Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
EPCC is the supercomputer centre at the University of Edinburgh. Throughout our 26-year history, EPCC has significant experience of running supercomputer services for both academic and industrial researchers. We currently run the UK's national supercomputer, ARCHER, that is used for modelling new materials, designing more efficient engines and investigating climate change.

This proposal is to enhance an existing supercomputer with additional compute nodes, and to add a significant amount of next generation accelerators. The design of supercomputers is going through a period of change and accelerators are becoming increasingly important to provide faster supercomputers while using less electricity. This enhanced system will be useful for researchers across the UK to prepare their computer programmes to make effective use of future national supercomputer systems after ARCHER.

As computers become more powerful, they generate ever-increasing amounts of data. Managing and analysing this data is very important to help researchers make new scientific discoveries. This proposal also includes increasing the size of the large data storage facility at EPCC. This will allow researchers to store their data, share it with other people, move it between different supercomputers, and make new discoveries that will improve society and people's lives.

There will be a number of these medium-size supercomputers funded alongside the existing national supercomputer, ARCHER. These will have different features and so will be useful for different research problems. It is important that these supercomputers work together to provide maximum benefits for everyone. We will work with all the other successful proposals to provide a coherent service across all the different supercomputers. Most of the time on our supercomputer will be freely available for researchers from throughout the UK. We will work together with the other successful proposals to ensure that researchers can get access to the most appropriate system/ In addition, we have developed a we.-based portal that makes it easier for users to access the different systems. As part of our proposal, we will work with all the other successful proposals so that they can use our web-based portal completely free of cost.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Impacts
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Summary
Date Materialised
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Organisation Website: http://www.ed.ac.uk