EPCC

For other uses, see EPCC (disambiguation).
EPCC
Established 1991
Field of research
High performance computing, Hardware acceleration, Computational science and engineering
Directors Alison Kennedy, Executive Director (Operations),
Mark Parsons, Executive Director (Research & Commercialisation),
Alan Simpson, Technical Director
Chairman
Richard Kenway
Staff 75[1]
Students 30
Address James Clerk Maxwell Building, Peter Guthrie Tait Road
Location Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Zip code
EH9 3FD
Campus King's Buildings,
Easter Bush (Advanced Computing Facility)
ARCHER Service Director
Arthur Trew
Affiliations Globus Alliance, Software Sustainability Institute, BonFIRE
Operating agency
University of Edinburgh
Website www.epcc.ed.ac.uk

EPCC, formerly the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, is a supercomputing centre based at the University of Edinburgh. Since its foundation in 1990, its stated mission has been to accelerate the effective exploitation of novel computing throughout industry, academia and commerce.

The University has supported high-performance computing (HPC) services since 1982. As of 2013, through EPCC, it supports the UK’s national high-end computing system, ARCHER (Advanced Research Computing High End Resource), and the UK Research Data Facility (UK-RDF).

Overview

EPCC's activities include: consultation and software development for industry and academia; research into high-performance computing; hosting advanced computing facilities and supporting their users; training and education .

The Centre offers two Masters programmes: MSc in High-Performance Computing and MSc in High-Performance Computing with Data Science .[2]

It is a member of the Globus Alliance and, through its involvement with the OGSA-DAI project, it works with the Open Grid Forum DAIS-WG.

Around half of EPCC’s annual turnover comes from collaborative projects with industry and commerce. In addition to privately funded projects with businesses, EPCC receives funding from Scottish Enterprise, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the European Commission.

History

EPCC was established in 1990, following on from the earlier Edinburgh Concurrent Supercomputer Project. Since 2002, EPCC has been part of the university's School of Physics & Astronomy.[3]

It was extensively involved in all aspects of Grid computing including: developing Grid middleware and architecture tools to facilitate the uptake of e-Science; developing business applications and collaborating in scientific applications and demonstration projects.

The Centre was a founder member of the UK’s National e-Science Centre (NeSC), the hub of Grid and e-Science activity in the UK. EPCC and NeSC were both partners in OMII-UK, which offers consultancy and products to the UK e-Science community. EPCC was also a founder partner of the Numerical Algorithms and Intelligent Software Centre (NAIS).

EPCC has hosted a variety of supercomputers over the years, including several Meiko Computing Surfaces, a Thinking Machines CM-200 Connection Machine, and a number of Cray systems including a Cray T3D and T3E.

High-performance computing facilities

EPCC manages a collection of HPC systems including ARCHER (the UK’s national high-end computing system) and a variety of smaller HPC systems. These systems are all available for industry use on a pay-per-use basis.

Current systems hosted by EPCC include:

Recent systems hosted by EPCC include:

Sample Projects

Projects that EPCC has been involved with that also have entries on Wikipedia.

References

External links

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