Cardiff University installs Bull supercomputer

Can we work out how the stars formed? How the earth’s crust moves? How to improve treatment for cancer patients? How to date an ancient burial site to within a decade?

Cardiff University’s new High Performance Computer will do all of this – and more.

Supplied by Bull, the new computer will be one of the most advanced in the UK academic sector, giving a whole new dimension to Cardiff University research. Initial test runs suggest it will be among the top three most powerful computers in British universities, enabling new research projects which previously were either impossible or would have taken too long to run.

The computer installation will be run by a new division, Advanced Research Computing @ Cardiff (ARCCA), set up to supply all University academics with the high-powered technology necessary to tackle today’s big research questions. Already ARCCA is putting its computing power to work in a wide variety of fields. These include:

• Health. Working with the new Positron Emission Tomography scanner (PET), able to detect cancers at a smaller size than previous technology. A separate project involves the School of Computer Science and Velindre Cancer Centre in developing more accurate radiotherapy plans for cancer patients.
• Neuroscience. Working with the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Center to map the structure and function of our brains.
• Geosciences. Simulating earth mantle and tectonic plate movements to improve our understanding of earthquakes and volcano eruptions. This international partnership requires a memory cluster of up to 1,000 processors working together.
• Astrophysics. Recreating the formation of stars and planets, and also taking part in the international hunt for gravitational waves – ripples in space first predicted by Albert Einstein.
• Archaeology. Working with English Heritage to pinpoint the carbon dating of prehistoric sites.
• Renewable Energy. Working with engineers to model hydrodynamic processes which can be used for tidal and wave power. The same models can also develop tools for flood forecasting.

The High Performance Computer will support study in all the University’s areas of research, including the arts, humanities and social sciences. The Business School is already working with ARCCA on economic modeling, and the School of English, Communication and Philosophy on linguistics.

The computer will not only be one of the most powerful at a British University, but also one of the “greenestrdquo;. Based in its own state-of-the-art data center, it is housed in ten energy efficient water-cooled racks, saving around £30,000 a year on conventional air cooling systems.