A new supercomputer, operated by the EPCC, will provide services to accelerate product development for business users. This new supercomputer will be used to dramatically reduce the time taken for businesses to bring new products to market – providing a competitive advantage for business users.
Potential applications could include helping to create efficient engineering devices, solving complex genetic calculations, or optimising the design of buildings.
Access to the supercomputer called Cirrus, is provided by EPCC, one of the UK’s leading supercomputing centres, based at the University of Edinburgh.
Clients will be able to use the £1 million machine to tackle their research and design challenges. The service is fully supported, and clients will also have access to EPCC’s consulting expertise in HPC and data analytics. Cirrus is an SGI ICE XA supercomputer comprising more than 5,000 processors.
This new service will facilitate businesses to perform complex simulations involving calculations that would be impossible, or much slower when carried out on conventional desktop computing systems. Delivering results in hours to days instead of weeks or months.
The system is housed at the University’s Advanced Computing Facility at Easter Bush, which also hosts the UK National supercomputing service, called ARCHER.
To celebrate the launch of Cirrus, EPCC is offering free time and support to the first 20 companies that apply to use the system through their website.
