EPCC
Encyclopedia
EPCC is a supercomputing centre based at the University of Edinburgh
. Since its foundation, its stated mission has been to accelerate the effective exploitation of novel computing throughout industry, academia and commerce.
The University has supported high-performance computing (HPC) services since 1982. , through EPCC, it now supports the UK’s national high-end computing system, HECToR
.
for industry
and academia
; research
into high-performance computing; hosting advanced computing facilities and supporting their users
; training
and education
.
The Centre supports visiting European researchers through the European Commission’s HPC-Europa programme and offers an MSc in High-Performance Computing.
EPCC is extensively involved in all aspects of Grid computing
including: developing Grid middleware
and architecture
tools to facilitate the uptake of e-Science
; developing business applications and collaborating in scientific applications and demonstration projects.
It is a member of the Globus Alliance
and, through its involvement with the OGSA-DAI project, it works with the Open Grid Forum
DAIS-WG. The Centre was a founder member of the UK’s National e-Science Centre (NeSC), the hub of Grid and e-Science activity in the UK. EPCC and NeSC are both partners in OMII-UK
, which offers consultancy and products to the UK e-Science community. EPCC is also a founder partner of the Numerical Algorithms and Intelligent Software Centre (NAIS).
EPCC’s Director is Professor Arthur Trew and the Chair is Professor Richard Kenway.
Around half of EPCC’s annual turnover comes from collaborative projects with industry and commerce. In addition to privately-funded projects with businesses, EPCC receives funding from Scottish Enterprise
, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
and the European Commission
.
EPCC has hosted a variety of supercomputers over the years, including several Meiko Computing Surfaces, a Thinking Machines CM-200 Connection Machine
, and a number of Cray
systems including a Cray T3D
and T3E
.
- which includes the first production Cray XT6 24-core system in the world - and a variety of smaller HPC systems. EPCC also offers access to its experimental, award-winning 64-FPGA-based Maxwell system. These systems are all available for industry use on a pay-per-use basis.
Recent systems hosted by EPCC include:
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
. Since its foundation, its stated mission has been to accelerate the effective exploitation of novel computing throughout industry, academia and commerce.
The University has supported high-performance computing (HPC) services since 1982. , through EPCC, it now supports the UK’s national high-end computing system, HECToR
HECToR
HECToR is a British academic national supercomputer service funded by EPSRC, NERC and BBSRC for the UK academic community. The HECToR service is run by partners including EPCC, STFC and Numerical Algorithms Group ....
.
Overview
EPCC's activities include: consultation and software developmentSoftware development
Software development is the development of a software product...
for industry
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...
and academia
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
; research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
into high-performance computing; hosting advanced computing facilities and supporting their users
User (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
; training
Training
The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of...
and education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
.
The Centre supports visiting European researchers through the European Commission’s HPC-Europa programme and offers an MSc in High-Performance Computing.
EPCC is extensively involved in all aspects of Grid computing
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
including: developing Grid middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
and architecture
Technical architecture
Technical architecture is one of several architecture domains that form the pillars of an enterprise architecture or solution architecture. It describes the structure and behaviour of the technology infrastructure of an enterprise, solution or system...
tools to facilitate the uptake of e-Science
E-Science
E-Science is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable distributed collaboration, such as the Access Grid...
; developing business applications and collaborating in scientific applications and demonstration projects.
It is a member of the Globus Alliance
Globus Alliance
The Globus Alliance is an international association dedicated to developing fundamental technologies needed to build grid computing infrastructures...
and, through its involvement with the OGSA-DAI project, it works with the Open Grid Forum
Open Grid Forum
The Open Grid Forum is a community of users, developers, and vendors for standardization of grid computing. It was formed in 2006 in a merger of the Global Grid Forum and the Enterprise Grid Alliance. The OGSA, OGSI, and JSDL standards were created by the OGF...
DAIS-WG. The Centre was a founder member of the UK’s National e-Science Centre (NeSC), the hub of Grid and e-Science activity in the UK. EPCC and NeSC are both partners in OMII-UK
OMII-UK
is an open-source organisation that empowers the UK research community by providing software for use in all disciplines of research. Their mission is to cultivate and sustain community software that is important to research....
, which offers consultancy and products to the UK e-Science community. EPCC is also a founder partner of the Numerical Algorithms and Intelligent Software Centre (NAIS).
EPCC’s Director is Professor Arthur Trew and the Chair is Professor Richard Kenway.
Around half of EPCC’s annual turnover comes from collaborative projects with industry and commerce. In addition to privately-funded projects with businesses, EPCC receives funding from Scottish Enterprise
Scottish Enterprise
Scottish Enterprise is a sponsored non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government which encourages economic development, enterprise, innovation and investment in business...
, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences , mainly to universities in the United Kingdom...
and the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
.
History
EPCC was established in 1990, following on from the earlier Edinburgh Concurrent Supercomputer Project. Since 2002, EPCC has been part of the university's School of Physics.EPCC has hosted a variety of supercomputers over the years, including several Meiko Computing Surfaces, a Thinking Machines CM-200 Connection Machine
Connection Machine
The Connection Machine was a series of supercomputers that grew out of Danny Hillis' research in the early 1980s at MIT on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computation...
, and a number of Cray
Cray
Cray Inc. is an American supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. , was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray. Seymour Cray went on to form the spin-off Cray Computer Corporation , in 1989, which went bankrupt in 1995,...
systems including a Cray T3D
Cray T3D
The T3D was Cray Research's first attempt at a massively parallel supercomputer architecture. Launched in 1993, it also marked Cray's first use of another company's microprocessor. The T3D consisted of between 32 and 2048 Processing Elements , each comprising a 150 MHz DEC Alpha 21064 ...
and T3E
Cray T3E
The Cray T3E was Cray Research's second-generation massively parallel supercomputer architecture, launched in late November 1995. The first T3E was installed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center in 1996. Like the previous Cray T3D, it was a fully distributed memory machine using a 3D torus...
.
High-performance computing facilities
As of 2010, EPCC manages a collection of HPC systems including HECToRHECToR
HECToR is a British academic national supercomputer service funded by EPSRC, NERC and BBSRC for the UK academic community. The HECToR service is run by partners including EPCC, STFC and Numerical Algorithms Group ....
- which includes the first production Cray XT6 24-core system in the world - and a variety of smaller HPC systems. EPCC also offers access to its experimental, award-winning 64-FPGA-based Maxwell system. These systems are all available for industry use on a pay-per-use basis.
Recent systems hosted by EPCC include:
- HECToRHECToRHECToR is a British academic national supercomputer service funded by EPSRC, NERC and BBSRC for the UK academic community. The HECToR service is run by partners including EPCC, STFC and Numerical Algorithms Group ....
: The current system (Phase 2b, XT6) is contained in 20 cabinets and comprises a total of 464 compute blades. Each blade contains four compute nodes, each with two 12-core AMD Opteron 2.1 GHz Magny Cours processors. This amounts to a total of 44,544 cores. Each 12-core socket is coupled with a Cray SeaStar2 routing and communications chip. This will be upgraded in late 2010 to the Cray Gemini interconnect. Each 12-core processor shares 16Gb of memory, giving a system total of 59.4 Tb. The theoretical peak performance of the phase 2b system is over 360 Tflops. - HPCxHPCxHPCx was a supercomputer located at the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, England. The supercomputer was maintained by the HPCx Consortium, UoE HPCX Ltd, which was led by the University of Edinburgh: EPCC, with the Science and Technology Facilities Council and IBM. The project was funded by EPSRC...
: Launched in 2002, when it was ranked ninth-fastest system in the world. HPCx is an IBM eServer p5 575IBM System pThe System p, formerly known as RS/6000, was IBM's RISC/UNIX-based server and workstation product line.In April 2008, IBM announced a rebranding of the System p and its unification with the System i platform. The resulting product line is called IBM Power Systems.-History:It was originally a line...
clusterCluster (computing)A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely thus in many respects forming a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks...
, located at Daresbury LaboratoryDaresbury LaboratoryDaresbury Laboratory is a scientific research laboratory near Daresbury in Cheshire, England, which began operations in 1962 and was officially opened on 16 June 1967 as the Daresbury Nuclear Physics Laboratory by the then Prime Minister of United Kingdom, Harold Wilson...
. It presently operates under the complementarity capability computing scheme, preferably hosting workload which can not easily be accommodated on the HECToR system. EPCC supports the HPCx and HECToR systems on behalf of the UK research councils, making them available to UK academics and industry. - Blue GeneBlue GeneBlue Gene is a computer architecture project to produce several supercomputers, designed to reach operating speeds in the PFLOPS range, and currently reaching sustained speeds of nearly 500 TFLOPS . It is a cooperative project among IBM Blue Gene is a computer architecture project to produce...
: Launched in 2005, EPCC's Blue Gene/L was the first Blue Gene system available outside the USA. EPCC operates this 2048-compute core service for the University of Edinburgh. - QCDOCQCDOCThe QCDOC, Quantum ChromoDynamics On a Chip, is a supercomputer technology focusing on using relatively cheap low power processing elements to produce a massively parallel machine...
: One of the world’s most powerful systems dedicated to the numerical investigation of quantum chromodynamicsQuantum chromodynamicsIn theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics is a theory of the strong interaction , a fundamental force describing the interactions of the quarks and gluons making up hadrons . It is the study of the SU Yang–Mills theory of color-charged fermions...
, which describes the interactions between quarks and gluons. It was developed in collaboration with a consortium of UK lattice physicists (UKQCD), Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
(NY), Riken Brookhaven National LaboratoryBrookhaven National LaboratoryBrookhaven National Laboratory , is a United States national laboratory located in Upton, New York on Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base...
and IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. - Maxwell : Maxwell is an innovative FPGA-based supercomputer built by the FPGA High Performance Computing Alliance (FHPCA). Maxwell comprises 32 blades housed in an IBM BladeCenterIBM BladeCenterThe IBM BladeCenter is IBM's blade server architecture.-History:Originally introduced in 2002, based on engineering work started in 1999, the IBM BladeCenter was a relative late comer to the blade market. But, it differed from prior offerings in that it supported the full range of high powered x86...
. Each blade comprises one XeonXeonThe Xeon is a brand of multiprocessing- or multi-socket-capable x86 microprocessors from Intel Corporation targeted at the non-consumer server, workstation and embedded system markets.-Overview:...
processor and two FPGAs. The FPGAs are connected by a fast communication subsystem which enables the total of 64 FPGAs to be connected together in an 8 × 8 toroidToroidToroid may refer to*Toroid , a doughnut-like solid whose surface is a torus.*Toroidal inductors and transformers which have wire windings on circular ring shaped magnetic cores.*Vortex ring, a toroidal flow in fluid mechanics....
al mesh. The processors are connected together via a PCIPeripheral Component InterconnectConventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
bus.
Sample Projects
Projects that EPCC is involved in that also have entries on Wikipedia.- BEinGRID: Grid technology for business.
- DEISADEISAThe Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications is a European Union supercomputer project. It is made up of a consortium of eleven leading national supercomputing centres from seven European countries...
: Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications. - EUFORIA: EU fusion for ITER Applications (EUFORIA) is a Grid and HPC project with the aim of supporting European nuclear fusionNuclear fusionNuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together, or "fuse", to form a single heavier nucleus. This is usually accompanied by the release or absorption of large quantities of energy...
scientists' computational simulations, enabling them to perform large and more detailed computational simulation. Specifically, it aims to enable scientists to simulate fusion plasmas at a large scale to match the larger machine, ITERITERITER is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project, which is currently building the world's largest and most advanced experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor at Cadarache in the south of France...
, which is currently under development. - PlanetHPCPlanetHPCPlanetHPC is a European network linking the major players in High-performance computingfrom the scientific and business sectors and EU policymakers with the aim of drawing up a roadmapfor future development of HPC technologies in Europe....
: Setting an R&D Roadmap for High Performance Computing in Europe