EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre)
As computing power become cheaper and more widely available, it has significantly improved efficiency and our work processes. High Performance Computers (HPCs or Supercomputers) are being used to model the real world with increasing realism and has enabled us to study and understand our physical world better.
For more information, I encourage you to visit their website:
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/
With the new paradigm extension towards data supported predictive capabilities, computers are now able to go through large volumes of available data and help people make better decisions (traditionally it would be too time consuming or just impossible for humans to gather, absorb and analyze the huge amount of data we generate everyday).
Many countries, including the UK are now realizing the importance/impact of HPC to our industries and the economy.
EPCC is actually one of the leading HPC centres in the world. I was quite surprised it is actually so close to home.
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EPCC
Founded
at The University of Edinburgh in 1990, EPCC is a leading European centre of
expertise in advanced research, technology transfer and the provision of
supercomputer services to academia and business.
Consultancy
Today,
companies are turning to HPC to help them solve complex and
challenging problems: increasingly modelling and simulation are used to design,
develop and test tomorrow’s products and services. HPC, whether in
finance, retail, manufacturing, energy or mainstream business environments, is
helping people to innovate and explore greater business challenges.
EPCC
provides consultancy and software development service to industry (a team
of 70 consultants with different expertise). Working with companies of all
sizes and projects of all sizes.
Independent
of all hardware and software vendors, which means EPCC is free to use the most
effective combination of hardware and software.
Main consulting
services include:
- HPC facilities access
- HPC application design, development and re-engineering
- HPC application performance optimisation
- Numerical modelling and simulation consultancy
- Industry HPC training
- Grid and distributed computing consultancy and solutions
- Bespoke software development and project management
- Data integration and data mining consultancy
Current
day rate is £500 – £900 + VAT.
During
a project, time on EPCC’s HPC systems is provided free of charge.
Projects
range from Aerospace, Business Data Analysis, Commercial, Energy,
Environmental, Grid Computing, Machine Vision, Medical, Research, Scheduling,
Simulation, Transport, Visualisation…etc.
Encourage HPC adoption and
marketing
For
Scottish companies that could benefit from HPC but lack the time,
money or expertise, there is a HPC
Adopters Programme. Launched in 2009 and supported by Scottish Enterprise,
this Programme brings the benefits of HPC to companies that can
demonstrate a real business case for its use.
Supercomputing
Scotland is a new initiative from EPCC and Scottish Enterprise to give
companies the knowledge to help them decide whether using high performance
computing (HPC) is the right choice for their business, and if it is, to
support them to take up the technology.
Research and Technology Transfer
Technology
Development and Transfer
-
Developing Grid middleware
and architecture tools.
-
Developing business
applications, demonstration projects.
-
Developing scientific
applications, demonstration projects.
-
Collaborate and participate
in global technology development projects.
EPCC’s
staffs work on collaborative projects across a wide range of disciplines. Themes:
Research Computing, Modelling & Simulation, Data Management, High
Performance Computing, Grid & Distributed Computing, Exascale Computing.
Visitor
programmes have traditionally been one of EPCC’s activities, beginning in 1993
with TRACS, an EC-funded collaborative research visit programme for European
computational scientists. Since 2004, EPCC has co-ordinated an expanded
programme offering collaborative visits to research groups associated with
leading HPC centres in six European countries (seven from 2009) - HPC-Europa
Transnational Access Programme.
Products
EPCC’s
software packages range from benchmark suites for parallel programming models
to innovative middleware solutions for distributed data access and management.
Provide Access
HECToR
(High End Computing Terascale Resources) is the latest national
high-performance computing service for the UK academic community. The computer
hardware is provided by Cray and it is accommodated and managed by UoE HPCX Ltd
at the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Computing Facility. NAG Ltd provides
computational science and engineering support for users of the system.
Each supercomputer has a range of application software which
may be used subject to licence conditions. Alternatively, users may wish to use
their own codes or other third party codes. The cost of time on each
supercomputer varies according to its capability.
Training
EPCC
is one of the major providers of training in High Performance Computing (HPC)
in Europe, offering a range of well-established courses for users of HPC
throughout the UK and Europe. (Short courses, MSc degrees, PhD programs).
Support
EPCC’s
User Support team provides support for all users of EPCC’s high-performance computing
systems. We operate the EPCC Helpdesk, register users for the parallel systems
and provide information on all aspects of EPCC’s work.
For more information, I encourage you to visit their website:
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/
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