EPCC

EPCC
Name	Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre
Founded	1990
Location	University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Type	Research centre
Focus	High-performance computing, computational science, data analytics
Director	Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith

EPCC

EPCC is a high-performance computing centre based at the University of Edinburgh that provides supercomputing resources, research, and training. It supports computational research across scientific and engineering domains and collaborates with industry, government, and international research organisations. The centre operates flagship systems and contributes to large-scale projects in climate science, bioinformatics, materials modelling, and artificial intelligence.

History

Founded in 1990 at the University of Edinburgh, the centre emerged amid European investments in computational infrastructure alongside initiatives such as the European Grid Infrastructure and national efforts like the UK Research and Innovation framework. Early partnerships linked the centre with projects funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and collaborations with laboratories including CERN and Met Office. Over the 1990s and 2000s the centre hosted successive supercomputers procured through UK national schemes such as the UK National Supercomputing Service and engaged with consortia that included organisations like Cray Research, IBM, and Intel. In the 2010s it expanded collaborations with technology firms including NVIDIA and AMD and took part in European projects supported by the European Commission and the Horizon 2020 programme.

Mission and Programs

The centre's mission emphasises providing computational capability, enabling research excellence, and fostering technology transfer with partners such as the Medical Research Council, Natural Environment Research Council, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. Core programs include provision of national compute services similar to those in the ARCHER and DiRAC ecosystems, bespoke software engineering for projects with organisations like Airbus, and development of scalable workflows used by research centres such as the James Hutton Institute and the Roslin Institute. The centre runs community-facing initiatives comparable to training programmes promoted by The Alan Turing Institute and contributes to standards discussed at forums with OpenStack Foundation and Linux Foundation participants.

Research and Partnerships

Research spans performance-portable programming models, optimisation for architectures from vendors like Arm Holdings and Intel Corporation, and applied simulation for domains connected to institutes such as the Met Office Hadley Centre, Natural History Museum, and European Space Agency. Partnerships include collaborations with academic departments across the Russell Group universities, industry consortia including Rolls-Royce and BP, and international collaborations with centres like NERSC and PRACE. The centre participates in multi-partner grants with funders such as the European Research Council and provides expertise to projects in areas championed by organisations like Wellcome Trust and European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

Facilities and Infrastructure

The centre operates floor-space and data-centre infrastructure capable of hosting systems from suppliers such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies, and Fujitsu. Its facilities include high-performance clusters equipped with accelerators from NVIDIA and vector processors from vendors that supplied systems to projects like Fugaku and historical machines at centres like Jülich Research Centre. Networking links connect to national research networks such as JANET(UK) and pan-European backbones like GÉANT. Storage and data-management services follow practices aligned with initiatives from CODATA and integrate workflow tools used in projects alongside groups such as European Bioinformatics Institute.

Education and Training

The centre delivers training in parallel programming paradigms exemplified by curricula from IEEE-affiliated conferences and tutorials similar to those offered by ACM workshops on high-performance computing. Courses cover technologies from vendors like NVIDIA (CUDA), programming models influenced by standards from OpenMP and MPI Forum, and data-science toolchains used in collaborations with organisations such as Data Science Campus at Office for National Statistics. It supervises postgraduate researchers in collaboration with the School of Informatics and provides internships with industry partners including Siemens and BT.

Notable Projects and Impact

Significant projects include computational climate modelling used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, genomic analysis pipelines comparable to workflows at Wellcome Sanger Institute, and materials simulations supporting work for companies such as Johnson Matthey and research groups at Oxford University. Contributions to open-source software and community libraries have influenced toolchains cited at conferences like SC (Supercomputing) and EuroMPI. The centre's work has enabled science in collaborations with institutions including Imperial College London, University College London, Cambridge University, and supported engineering analyses for programmes involving National Grid and Network Rail.

Category:High-performance computing organizations Category:University of Edinburgh institutions