Welsh High Performance Computing collaboration launched
7 January 2011
An all-Wales University supercomputing collaboration, designed to give access to some of the most advanced computer technology and skills, was officially launched in July.
High Performance Computing Wales (HPC Wales) is a £40M pan-Wales university project which will give businesses working independently or in collaboration with academics access to advanced research computing capability.
Advanced Research Computing @ Cardiff (ARCCA) will provide the gateway for researchers at Cardiff University to access HPC Wales.
The HPC Wales project, which will help boost the Welsh economy, will feature two main computer hubs at Cardiff and Swansea Universities, which will be linked to partner 'spokes' at Aberystwyth, Bangor and Glamorgan Universities, University of Wales Alliance Universities and Technium business innovation centres around Wales.
Over 100 innovation collaborative projects between universities and industry that would benefit from HPC technology have already been identified.
Over the lifetime of the five-year project it’s hoped it will create up to 400 jobs, improve Wales’ economic performance, business competitiveness and increase the research and performance of Welsh universities.
HPC Wales will be managed by a charitable, not-for-profit organisation set up by the St David’s Day Group of Universities and the University of Wales Alliance.
ARCCA is already helping to support a series of key business research collaborations.
Working with industrial collaborators in Dow Chemicals, Exxon Mobil, Johnson Matthey and SASOL (South Africa), researchers from the School of Chemistry are using supercomputing to help reduce the experimental effort used in producing the next generation of cleaner, and energy efficient catalytic materials.
In collaboration with industrial partners at Shell, the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences are using supercomputing to combine seismic tomography, plate motion history, Earth mantle circulation modelling and lithosphere modelling to better understand plate motion history and the role of the Earth’s mantle.
School of Engineering researchers are developing numerical models for predicting the hydrodynamic and water quality models for river, estuarine and coastal waters, working in partnership with industrial and academic partners - Arup, Halcrow and HR Wallingford; Environmental Agency.
The School of Dentistry is also involved in a wide area of multidisciplinary research such as biomechanics, cell mechanics, orthopaedics, dental mechanics, soft tissue models, medical imaging including clinical simulation procedures.
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