HPC Wales

HPC Wales
Name	HPC Wales
Formation	2010
Dissolution	2016
Type	Research infrastructure
Headquarters	Cardiff
Region served	Wales
Parent organization	Swansea University

HPC Wales was a national high-performance computing initiative providing supercomputing resources and support to researchers across Wales. The programme connected multiple universities and research centres to deliver compute, storage, and consultancy for projects in science, engineering, medicine, and the arts. It linked academic users with industrial partners and public bodies to accelerate computational research and innovation.

History

HPC Wales emerged from collaborative planning involving Swansea University, Cardiff University, Aberystwyth University, Bangor University, and University of South Wales alongside regional development agencies such as Welsh Government programmes and funding bodies like UK Research and Innovation stakeholders. Its inception drew on precedents from national infrastructures including ARCHER, PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), and Supercomputing Wales initiatives, and was announced amid discussions with technology vendors such as Dell Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel Corporation. During its operational period the project coordinated with research councils including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council and engaged with European Union funding mechanisms similar to European Regional Development Fund projects. Leadership included principal investigators and directors affiliated with institutions that had links to programmes at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, and other major UK research centres.

Infrastructure and Facilities

The technical estate comprised clusters of compute nodes, high-performance storage arrays, and high-speed networks connecting data centres at partner campuses like Swansea Bay Campus and facilities comparable to those at Hartree Centre and National Supercomputing Centre (UK). Hardware components were sourced from suppliers including NVIDIA, ARM Holdings, AMD, and Cisco Systems with software stacks drawing on projects such as OpenMPI, SLURM Workload Manager, Hadoop, and OpenStack. Networking used protocols and links interoperable with national research and education networks such as JANET (UK), and engaged with international collaborations like GÉANT. Systems were housed in data centres with standards aligned to organisations including Uptime Institute and energy-efficiency programmes referencing Green500 practices. The facility offered batch scheduling, parallel filesystem services (comparable to Lustre file system), and visualization suites paralleling resources at Virtual Reality Centre and HPC visualisation labs at European centres.

Services and Users

HPC Wales provided user-facing services: compute allocations, consultancy, training, and software optimisation. Training workshops referenced curricula used by Software Carpentry and techniques taught at summer schools like SC (Supercomputing Conference) and EuroHPC forums. Users spanned investigators from Cardiff Metropolitan University, biomedical groups linked to National Health Service (Wales), climate scientists collaborating with Met Office, engineers connected to Airbus, and data scientists in projects with Natural Resources Wales. Industry engagement included small-to-medium enterprises and larger partners in energy sectors such as Celtic Sea tidal research and collaborations with BP and renewable consortia. User support teams offered code porting for common packages including GROMACS, Gaussian (software), ANSYS, and bespoke research software used by consortia like UKAEA.

Research and Education Impact

The infrastructure underpinned research outputs in fields represented by partners at Cardiff School of Mathematics, Swansea Medical School, Aberystwyth Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, and engineering groups linked to Welsh School of Architecture. Projects produced publications in venues associated with Nature Publishing Group, IEEE, and Elsevier journals, contributing to grant awards from bodies such as Wellcome Trust, Royal Society, and European Research Council. Educationally, HPC Wales supported postgraduate training, doctoral students enrolled in doctoral training centres like those at EPSRC and collaborative programmes comparable to Doctoral Training Partnership models, and hosted internships modeled on schemes from Innovate UK. Outreach activities interfaced with museums and cultural partners like National Museum Wales.

Funding and Governance

The programme's funding model combined capital and operational grants from regional and national sources, aligning with priorities set by Welsh Government economic development strategies and leveraging match funding approaches akin to those used by European Regional Development Fund projects. Governance involved university boards, steering groups with representatives from partner institutions including Swansea University, Cardiff University, and Bangor University, and advisory input from external stakeholders such as representatives from Higher Education Funding Council for Wales-era frameworks and enterprise organisations like Business Wales. Procurement and audit processes followed UK public-sector procurement norms interacting with bodies such as Crown Commercial Service.

Closure and Legacy

Operations wound down as funding cycles ended and strategic consolidation moved resources toward national and European centres including ARCHER2 and initiatives under EuroHPC JU. The legacy persists through trained personnel who transitioned to roles at institutions like University of Southampton, software artefacts contributed to community repositories including GitHub, and sustained collaborations between Welsh academia and industry evident in ongoing projects with Met Office and healthcare research with NHS Wales. Data management, best-practice documentation, and workflows developed during the programme influenced subsequent infrastructure planning at partner universities and in UK-wide high-performance computing policy discussions.

Category:High-performance computing in the United Kingdom