New Supercomputer at Leeds University

A new supercomputer hosted at the University of Leeds is offering businesses and academic researchers across the North of England unparalleled computing power. The supercomputer is capable of a peak performance of 110 trillion operations per second – the approximate equivalent of the combined processing power of 500,000 iPads.

The £3.25 million facility, N8 High Performance Computing (N8 HPC) centre, puts one of the world most powerful computers, called Polaris, at the disposal of researchers at the universities of Leeds, nearby universities and their industry partners. The centre will enable academic and private sector researchers to build more realistic models based on large amounts of data and undertake more complex analyses in areas including the life sciences, energy, digital media and aerospace.

Such processing power of course attracts the attention of a myriad of high-tech businesses. These companies need the extreme processing power of the N8 HPC to help with complex modelling and design tasks which cannot be undertaken by almost all other computers. Furthermore the best students and experts in the field of computer science also flock to the supercomputer. This will no doubt lead to a concentration of computer science talent in leads which is a great environment for any student who is scientifically oriented. International students may find they are will be in high demand by the surrounding cluster of high-tech firms after completing their studies in such a specialised atmosphere.

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More than 100 representatives from leading UK businesses joined small and medium-sized enterprises from across the North of England and delegates from many universities at a launch event on March 7 2013.  For example, Iceotope, already has a close relationship with the University of Leeds and is exploring how the new facility can support its research. The company designs and manufactures advanced liquid-cooling systems for computer servers.

Source: University of Leeds

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