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| Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre | |
|---|---|
| Name | EPCC |
| Established | 1990 |
| Type | Research centre |
| Affiliation | University of Edinburgh |
| Location | Edinburgh |
| Country | Scotland |
| Director | Mike Hobson |
Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre is a high-performance computing and research centre based at the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland. The centre provides supercomputing infrastructure, research in computational science, and services for industry, academia, and government bodies. It supports projects across disciplines including climate science, bioinformatics, engineering, and finance by combining hardware, software, and training to accelerate large-scale computation and data analysis.
Founded in 1990 within the University of Edinburgh, the centre grew from early work on parallel processing and distributed systems influenced by research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories (UK), IBM Research, and Sinclair Research. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s it collaborated with initiatives such as the UK Research and Innovation framework and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to host national-scale resources. The centre became a node in UK-wide computational networks alongside centres like the Science and Technology Facilities Council facilities and partnered with projects funded by the European Commission and European Research Council. Leadership transitions included directors who had links to Cray Research and national supercomputing efforts, and the centre expanded during waves of procurement involving vendors such as Cray Inc., IBM, and HPE. Milestones include the deployment of early parallel clusters, participation in pan-UK e-infrastructure programs with Jisc, and contributions to initiatives alongside the Alan Turing Institute.
The centre's research spans high-performance computing (HPC), performance engineering, software development, and data science. Teams work on scalable algorithms for applications in Met Office climate modelling, European Molecular Biology Laboratory bioinformatics workflows, and simulation platforms used by Rolls-Royce and BP. Services include consultancy for porting applications to parallel architectures, performance tuning for codes used by groups such as Max Planck Society researchers, and cloud and container solutions supporting collaborations with Microsoft Research, Amazon Web Services, and Google DeepMind. The centre develops open-source software and libraries used by communities tied to projects from CERN and the Human Genome Project era, supporting reproducible pipelines applied by teams at Wellcome Trust-funded centres and hospitals. Its work integrates with standards from bodies like OpenACC and Message Passing Interface consortia.
Hosting national-scale compute systems, the centre operates clusters and storage solutions procured from vendors including NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, and Dell EMC. Facilities include data centres with cooling infrastructure designed to meet standards similar to those used by National Physical Laboratory sites. Systems provide GPU-accelerated nodes used by machine learning teams collaborating with DeepMind affiliates and CPU-heavy clusters relied upon by researchers at Imperial College London and University of Oxford. The centre provides secure data services for sensitive projects conducted with partners such as NHS Scotland and conservation datasets aligned with work by Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Networking connects to national research networks like JANET and transnational links to the European Grid Infrastructure.
The centre delivers training courses, workshops, and summer schools for researchers from institutions including University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, and University of St Andrews. Programs cover parallel programming with frameworks associated with OpenMP, CUDA, and MPI and include hands-on modules for users from organizations such as Siemens and BAE Systems. Postgraduate teaching supports degree programs at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh and contributes to doctoral training partnerships funded by the Scottish Funding Council and the Economic and Social Research Council where students collaborate on projects with partners like European Space Agency. Outreach includes tutorials at conferences such as Supercomputing Conference and International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis.
The centre maintains strategic partnerships with academic institutions including University of Manchester, University of Cambridge, and University of Warwick, and with industrial partners like Microsoft, IBM, Rolls-Royce, and BP. It engages in consortia with national bodies including UK Research and Innovation and pan-European projects involving the European Commission and Horizon 2020. The centre contributes to multi-institution initiatives with The Alan Turing Institute, CERN, and Met Office research programs, and works with healthcare organizations like NHS Scotland and research charities such as the Wellcome Trust on translational computing efforts.
Notable projects include support for climate simulations used by the Met Office and contributions to genomics analyses aligned with Sanger Institute efforts. The centre enabled performance-critical engineering simulations for Rolls-Royce and energy modelling projects with BP and National Grid plc. It participated in infrastructure work for large-scale physics collaborations such as CERN experiments and offered computational solutions for public health studies involving Public Health Scotland. The centre's software and performance tools have been adopted by research groups within the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and national laboratories like the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
Governance structures reflect its position within the University of Edinburgh with advisory links to funding bodies including UK Research and Innovation, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and the Scottish Funding Council. Funding combines university core support, competitive grants from entities like the European Research Council, and commercial contracts with industry partners including Microsoft and Rolls-Royce. Procurement cycles and capital investment have historically involved collaborations with vendors such as Cray Inc., HPE, and Dell EMC, and operational oversight complies with standards used by public-sector partners such as NHS Scotland.
Category:Supercomputing centers Category:University of Edinburgh