The University of Southampton is investing £3m in a new supercomputer, built using IBM iDataPlex server technology and capable of more than 74 trillion calculations per second.
The new supercomputer, containing more than 8,000 processors, will be used by researchers to make highly complex computations in fields ranging from cancer research to climate change.
'The University of Southampton is one of the UK's leading research universities and one of the top 100 in the world. To ensure that we remain at the cutting-edge of research, we must invest in the best facilities for our research staff,' comments the University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Philip Nelson. 'This significant investment will ensure that our researchers have computing facilities to rival the best in the world.'
The computer, which was custom-designed and will be built, implemented and configured for the university by UK high-performance computer and storage integrator OCF, has a capability equivalent to around 4,000 standard office computers, running simultaneously.
It will greatly assist the University’s medical researchers. Geneticist Professor Andrew Collins comments: 'We need extremely high levels of computing power in our work mapping the disease genes implicated in breast cancer and glaucoma. With the volume of genome data increasing hugely each year, its analysis requires the most highly-sophisticated facilities.'
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