A robust new supercomputer, at The Science and Expertise Amenities Council (STFC), will assist UK trade to harness the potential of synthetic intelligence (AI)
March 26, 2024 – The Science and Expertise Amenities Council (STFC) has signed an settlement with Lenovo for the set up of a strong new supercomputer for the STFC Hartree Centre.
Ten occasions extra highly effective than its predecessor, however utilizing much less electrical energy because of Lenovo’s direct water cooling, the brand new supercomputer will energy AI analysis for UK trade
The brand new supercomputer is a part of the Hartree Centre’s £210 million Hartree Nationwide Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) programme, which offers UK trade entry to state-of-the-art digital applied sciences and experience and is complementary to investments within the wider AI Analysis Useful resource (AIRR).
It can help the HNCDI’s quickly increasing supercomputing and AI actions, and can be put in later this 12 months at its new £30 million supercomputing centre, at present beneath building.
A leap in supercomputing processing energy
A 44.7 petaflop system, the Lenovo ThinkSystem Neptune will carry out greater than 44 quadrillion floating level operations (calculations) per second.
To place this into context, in case you have been to hold out one calculation per second, it will take almost 1400 million years to succeed in this quantity.
The brand new GPU-based system (graphics processing unit) is ideal for AI workloads, and marks a big leap for the Hartree Centre’s capabilities, with ten occasions the processing energy of its present system, Scafell Pike. Moreover, it will likely be extra power-efficient, taking over much less area and utilizing much less electrical energy per unit of efficiency.
The brand new supercomputer makes use of modern heat water cooling which might cut back vitality calls for by as much as 40% whereas boosting efficiency by as much as 10%.
Powering UK Trade with AI
Positioned at STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory, at Sci-Tech Daresbury within the Liverpool Metropolis Area, the Hartree Centre is the UK’s solely supercomputing centre devoted to trade engagement. This functionality will drive ahead innovation in trade use instances and purposes.
Its HNCDI programme performs an important position in equipping companies with abilities and technical information to undertake rising digital applied sciences, together with supercomputing, quantum computing, and AI.
It’s enabling productiveness, innovation and progress in UK organisations by way of entry to those superior supercomputing applied sciences, that are sometimes accessible solely to academia and large-scale trade,
Fixing international challenges
On the HNCDI, the brand new supercomputer can be strategically positioned to contribute to discovery-led industrial analysis, specializing in options to international challenges in areas equivalent to:
- climate and local weather modelling
- cleaner vitality initiatives
- drug discovery
- well being applied sciences
- new supplies
- automotive developments
- authorized purposes
This contains the Hartree Centre’s continued collaboration with the UK Atomic Vitality Authority, which is utilizing the Centre to analysis new reactors for clear nuclear fusion vitality.
Finally, the brand new supercomputer will cut back the time and value related to making analysis breakthroughs, together with for organisations such because the Met Workplace, Unilever and Rolls Royce, that the Hartree Centre has continued to work with over the past decade.
“We’re very excited to be working with Lenovo on our subsequent era of supercomputer on the Hartree Centre. Our mission is to equip UK trade with the information, abilities and compute wanted to totally unlock the potential of superior digital applied sciences.” stated Kate Royse, Director, STFC Hartree Centre. “With our new supercomputer we will help UK trade in the usage of large information and AI applied sciences to allow UK companies to take a number one position internationally on the accountable adoption and exploitation of AI expertise.”
“Lenovo is equally keen about our collaboration with the Hartree Centre on its bold journey to revolutionize HPC and AI capabilities within the UK. Our collaboration is not only about delivering a state-of-the-art supercomputer; it’s about constructing a flexible, strong, and highly effective system tailor-made to satisfy the Centre’s numerous and evolving wants.” stated Noam Rosen, EMEA Director HPC/AI, Lenovo. “From superior modeling and simulation in varied scientific disciplines to pioneering work in AI and machine studying, this new power-efficient supercomputer can be a cornerstone for innovation, pushing the boundaries of huge information and AI applied sciences to bolster the UK trade’s international management in accountable and moral expertise adoption.”
“STFC’s settlement with Lenovo is an thrilling milestone in our mission to supply UK companies with entry to the very important infrastructure and experience that can assist them to develop and succeed on a worldwide scale, which in flip will drive productiveness and job creation.” stated Mark Thomson, Govt Chair, STFC. “By enabling UK trade to undertake superior digital applied sciences, we’re supporting the federal government ambitions to construct a aggressive and modern digital economic system that can each turbo drive financial progress and reap societal advantages for the UK, in addition to for the UK to be a worldwide AI superpower.”
The HNCDI new Lenovo supercomputer in numbers
- The ThinkSystem Neptune can carry out the identical variety of calculations as 20,790 top quality smartphones
- An hour of calculation on a market main smartphone would take 0.17 seconds
- It will probably maintain 4500 hours of 4k video in its working reminiscence
- It will probably maintain 60,000 hours of 4k video in its exhausting disks
Lenovo
Lenovo is a US$62 billion income international expertise powerhouse, ranked #217 within the Fortune International 500, using 77,000 individuals world wide, and serving thousands and thousands of consumers day-after-day in 180 markets. Targeted on a daring imaginative and prescient to ship Smarter Expertise for All, Lenovo has constructed on its success because the world’s largest PC firm by additional increasing into progress areas that gasoline the development of ‘New IT’ applied sciences (consumer, edge, cloud, community, and intelligence) together with server, storage, cell, software program, options, and providers. This transformation along with Lenovo’s world-changing innovation is constructing a extra inclusive, reliable, and smarter future for everybody, all over the place. Lenovo is listed on the Hong Kong inventory trade beneath Lenovo Group Restricted (HKSE: 992)(ADR: LNVGY). To search out out extra go to https://www.lenovo.com, and browse concerning the newest information by way of our StoryHub.
The Science and Expertise Amenities Council (STFC)
The Science and Expertise Amenities Council (STFC), a part of UK Analysis and Innovation (UKRI), funds and helps analysis in particle and nuclear physics, astronomy, gravitational analysis and astrophysics, and area science. It operates a community of 5 nationwide laboratories and helps UK analysis at a lot of worldwide analysis services together with CERN, FERMILAB and the ESO telescopes in Chile. STFC is protecting the UK on the forefront of worldwide science and has a broad science portfolio, and dealing with the tutorial and industrial communities to share its experience. https://www.ukri.org/councils/stfc/
The STFC Hartree Centre:
The Hartree Centre helps UK companies and organisations of any measurement to discover and undertake supercomputing, information analytics and synthetic intelligence (AI) applied sciences for enhanced productiveness, smarter innovation and financial progress.
Backed by vital UK authorities funding and strategic partnerships with trade leaders equivalent to the College of Liverpool, the Hartree Centre is house to among the most superior digital applied sciences and specialists within the UK.
In 2021, the Hartree Nationwide Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) programme was established to supply a secure and supportive setting for UK companies and public sector organisations to accumulate the talents wanted to undertake AI, develop proofs-of-concept and de-risk funding into rising digital applied sciences equivalent to quantum computing.
The Hartree Centre is a part of the Science and Expertise Amenities Council (STFC). https://www.hartree.stfc.ac.uk/
