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Imagine if every person on the planet were able to carry out 250,000 calculations per second simultaneously. This is the combined capability of the next stage of development, announced yesterday, of two giant computers, HECToR and BlueGene/Q, based at the University of Edinburgh's Advanced Computing Facility (ACF). It marks the next chapter in the UK's supercomputing programme.

The computers can deliver complex computer simulations across a range of scientific disciplines and are funded by four of the UK Research Councils, EPSRC, STFC, NERC and BBSRC. Their increased computing capacity and performance will help UK researchers' work in forecasting the impact of climate change, the fundamental structure of matter, fluctuations in ocean currents, projecting the spread of epidemics, designing new materials, the structure and evolution of the universe and developing new medicinal drugs.

Launching the new phases at an event jointly hosted by the University of Edinburgh and the UK Research Councils, Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, said: "E-infrastructure is fundamental to modern research and development. It helps our world-leading science base achieve breakthroughs across a range of important disciplines and helps industry design and manufacture new products.

"These impressive new supercomputers will drive growth and innovation. They will provide UK businesses and researchers with the technology they need to compete successfully on a global scale."

Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, said: "We are delighted to host the next generation in supercomputing capability for researchers across the UK. HECToR and BlueGene/Q will each play a significant role in facilitating ground-breaking research across many areas of science, with tremendous benefits for society. We look forward to working with our partner organisations in delivering this computing capability and to seeing the contribution it will make."

Professor John Womersley, Chief Executive Officer of STFC said: "Supercomputers are the essential, behind-the-scenes tools that enable modern science. Whether you are analysing climate data from a satellite, designing a new medicine or looking for the Higgs boson, access to high performance computers is vital. These new computers will undoubtedly facilitate breakthroughs across the scientific disciplines, and lead to additional economic and societal benefits for the UK."

Commenting on HECToR Phase 3, which has been funded by a £13.9 million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which manages the service, Professor David Delpy, Chief Executive, said: "High Performance Computing is vital to supporting the development of science, discovery and new commercial partnerships. As HPC becomes more powerful, and it is possible to model more complex problems in greater detail, the types of simulation that HECToR is capable of become an increasingly valuable tool."

Both the BlueGene/Q and HECToR facilities have approximately the same computational performance, 800 Teraflops (800 million million million million). HECToR has a memory of 90 Terabytes - equivalent to that of over 180,000 iPhones. It also has one Petabyte of disk space for storing data. If your iPhone had that much space it could hold 200 million tracks, and if you started listening to each one of them in 2012, you would still be listening in 3153.

The BlueGene/Q design achieves a very high concentration of computing power in a small space and is the most energy efficient supercomputer ever built. Using just the electricity it takes to power a light bulb it can perform the calculations of 100 laptops.

Notes to editors

About HECToR

HECToR (High-End Computing Terascale Resources) is the UK's largest, fastest and most powerful supercomputer. It is capable of over 800 million million calculations a second - that's over 114,000 calculations a second for every man, woman and child on Earth.

The HECToR facility is funded by Department for Business, Innovation and Skills' (BIS), EPSRC, The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), emphasising the breadth of science supported and has evolved in three phases since 2008.

HECToR phase 3 has been funded by a £13.9 million EPSRC grant.

The software (link opens in a new window) and hardware (link opens in a new window) used has been upgraded and increased since phase 1.

HECToR's objectives are:

• to provide a world-class service for UK-based academic research;
• to support the development of innovative computational technologies;
• to encourage industry and commerce to make effective use of high-end computing;
• to work with colleagues in Europe and worldwide.

HECToR phase 3 uses the latest "Bulldozer" multicore processor architecture from AMD which theoretically allows twice the performance over the old architecture used in phase 2b. Learning to exploit these new architectures will place the UK at the forefront of scientific software development.

The EPSRC is the managing agent for the HECToR service on behalf of Research Councils UK (RCUK).

The facility has been delivered by the HECToR Partners (link opens in a new window), a consortium of organisations with international standing and many years of experience in this field. The HECToR partners are::

• UoE HPCX Ltd
• NAG Ltd
• University of Edinburgh
• Cray Inc.
• STFC Daresbury Laboratory

About BlueGene/Q

BlueGene/Q is the most energy efficient supercomputer ever built. It can perform the calculation of 100 laptops using the same level of electricity used to power a lightbulb. It has been top of the Green 500 ranking (link opens in a new window) since November 2010.

The University of Edinburgh BlueGene/Q computer chip is the result of a unique knowledge transfer and industrial partnership activity with IBM. It is part of the STFC's DiRAC facility that provides specialised advanced HPC capability for some of the world's most complicated scientific problems in astronomy and particle physics.

The machine will allow UK particle physicists to provide precise theoretical input, needed in their search for new physics on high energy particle experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider. It focuses on solving the theory of the strong nuclear force to understand the properties of the bound states of quarks and gluons that form familiar particles like the proton and neutron in the atomic nucleus.

Providing early access to the machine gives the UK the edge in exploiting this new technology for science. This year BlueGene/Q will be upgraded to a 1.26Pflops/s combined system (1 Pflop is 1000 teraflops) making it one of the fastest computers in Europe and giving the UK a world-leading simulation capability matching those of our US and Japanese competitors.

For more information, please contact:

• EPSRC Press Office
  Tel: +44 (0)1793 444 405