Cirrus supercomputer helps speed commercial ideas to reality

Its applications could include helping to create efficient engineering devices, solving complex genetic calculations, or optimising the design of buildings.

The high performance computing (HPC) facility could also help businesses from a range of science and engineering sectors cut the cost of product and service development.

Clients will be able to use the £1.45 million machine to tackle their research and design challenges. The system was jointly purchased with Edinburgh Genomics. The service is fully supported and clients will also have access to EPCC’s consulting expertise in HPC and data analytics. 

Cirrus is an SGI ICE XA supercomputer comprising more than 5,000 processor cores - the equivalent of thousands of desktop computers.

This facilitates calculations that would be impossible, or much slower, when carried out on conventional desktop computing systems, delivering results in hours to days instead of weeks or months. The fifth generation system powers many of the largest supercomputing environments in the world.

The system is housed at the University’s Advanced Computing Facility at Easter Bush, which also hosts the UK National supercomputing service, called ARCHER.

George Graham, Commercial Manager of EPCC, said: “This newly installed computing power – in tandem with EPCC’s in-house expertise – means we are well placed to help businesses meet many of the computational challenges associated with developing new products and services.”

Apply for FREE time on Cirrus

To celebrate the launch of Cirrus, we are offering free time and support to the first 20 companies that apply to use the system. Follow this link to find out more: Apply to use Cirrus.

Further information

Read more about the system: www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/cirrus