Work begins on UK's new £750m supercomputer

 

Construction has officially begun on the UK’s new £750 million national supercomputer project.

Project leaders say that once completed, it will become the most powerful computer in the United Kingdom and rank among the most advanced systems globally. The facility is expected to be fully operational by the end of next year.

The supercomputer will be housed within buildings linked to the University of Edinburgh, located on the outskirts of Penicuik and Roslin in Midlothian. The site is close to the research institute famously associated with the cloning of Dolly the sheep.

The project represents a major development after an earlier setback, when it was paused by the UK government following a change in administration, before later being reinstated a year afterwards.

What is a supercomputer?

The researchers leading the project, along with scientists who plan to use the system, have expressed great enthusiasm about the arrival of the new supercomputer.

As its name suggests, a supercomputer is an exceptionally powerful machine, and the capabilities of this new system are remarkable. According to Professor Mark Parsons, who directs the project at the University of Edinburgh, the facility will be about the size of a medium-sized supermarket.

Equipped with thousands of processors, the machine will be capable of performing one quintillion calculations every second—equivalent to one billion billion operations per second.

Professor Parsons explained that the supercomputer will allow researchers and businesses to build detailed simulations of the world around them. By processing enormous amounts of data, it can create highly accurate models of complex systems that cannot easily be tested through traditional laboratory experiments.

He added that such computers are designed to study phenomena that are too fast to observe directly, such as quantum processes, too large to recreate, like earthquakes, or too slow to witness in real time, including the expansion of the universe.

What will the new supercomputer do?

The UK's current national supercomputer, ARCHER2, is located at the same site but is scheduled to be retired by the end of this year after supporting a wide range of scientific and industrial research.

Over its lifetime, ARCHER2 contributed to projects such as improving aircraft engine designs for Rolls-Royce, studying the materials used in mobile phones, and supporting international research efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Its successor, which will be owned by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is expected to be around 50 times more powerful. According to Professor Mark Parsons, its advanced computing capabilities will enable researchers to tackle scientific problems that cannot be solved using conventional computers.

The new system is expected to play an important role in areas including quantum computing research and climate change modelling. Parsons has encouraged scientists across the UK to propose ambitious research projects that could benefit from its capabilities.

Although the supercomputer will require a significant amount of electricity to operate, the excess heat produced by the facility will be recovered and used to warm university buildings, with the possibility of supplying heat to nearby homes in the future.