The university is in the process of implementing a more powerful High Performance Computing (HPC) service, making sure we have the facility to process and analyse larger amounts of data and perform more complex calculations.

The university’s HPC service is a research facility available to academic staff and research students, from any School or Faculty, who have the need for computing resource substantially greater than a standard PC.

Enabling research that changes the world

As one of the UK’s leading research universities, UoN is renowned for the strength of its research, and quality of data, through which ground-breaking scientific discoveries are made, and innovations are fuelled.

But, as technology continues to evolve at an exponential pace, it is crucial to ensure our HPC infrastructure can meet growing demand accordingly.

Our current HPC service (Augusta) will reach end of life in October 2023. We are therefore in the process of implementing a more powerful service, to ensure we have the facility to process and analyse increasingly large amounts of data, and perform complex calculations at high speed to enable high quality and valuable research outputs in key research areas.

Implementing a new, more powerful HPC

The new HPC service is anticipated to be fully functional by November 2023.

The new hardware has been procured, and we are currently awaiting delivery, after which the hardware and software will be installed, tested, and all existing services migrated to the new service.

What are the benefits of the new HPC service?

The new HPC service will be more widely accessible to support increasingly compute-intensive work performed in areas of the university that are not traditional users of HPC, enabling better accessibility to compute service and skills.

In addition, there will be support staff in place to make it even easier for new users to utilise the HPC service.

The service will also be available for experimentation beyond larger, funded projects, leading to more ambitious research and resulting funding, more high-quality outputs, increased inter-disciplinary collaboration, attracting researchers and PGRs.

As well as this, the new service will have:

• A higher capacity and more versatile on-premise compute service will allow for more ambitious calculations
• Better data storage and connectivity
• Higher throughput of jobs and support for more efficient use
• Increased ambition for research on national-level HPC facilities

Want to know more or provide your feedback?

Should you have any questions regarding the HPC, or would like to know more, please contact Colin Bannister in the first instance.

Similarly, we welcome any input you may have regarding user priorities. Should you wish to provide your feedback, please complete the form here.