New supercomputer could dramatically cut the time taken to bring products and services to market

Businesses could dramatically cut the time taken to bring products and services to market with a new supercomputer.

Its applications could include helping to create efficient engineering devices, solving complex genetic calculations, or optimising the design of buildings.

The high performance computing (HPC) facility could also help businesses from a range of science and engineering sectors cut the cost of product and service development.

Systems support

Access to the supercomputer, called Cirrus, is provided by EPCC, the UK's leading supercomputing centre 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 core processors – the equivalent of thousands of desktop computers.

Enabling calculation

The device facilitates 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 fifth generation system powers many of the largest supercomputing environments in the world.

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 www.epcc.ed.ac.uk.