Warwick Uni receives £3.2 million funding for high performance computing centre

The Midlands Innovation group of universities, including the University of Warwick, have been awarded £3.2 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to establish HPC Midlands Plus.

The HPC Midlands Plus is a centre of excellence in high performance computing (HPC). The funding will help University of Warwick researchers to develop fast and efficient scientific software for future supercomputers. In fact, the HPC Midlands Plus supercomputer will enable calculations up to four times larger than currently possible with local facilities.

Additionally, the facility will support projects in nanomaterial design, quantum technologies and fluid dynamics. It will be based at the Loughborough Science and Enterprise Park, utilising the seven universities’ collective expertise in high performance computing to drive forward research and innovation in this growing area.

Dr David Quigley, of the Centre for Scientific Computing within Warwick’s Department of Physics, said: “The new HPC Midlands Plus supercomputer will allow researchers at Warwick to redefine the scale of computational problem which can be tackled routinely. It will enable calculations up to four times larger than is possible with local facilities, as well as providing a test bed for new ways of tightly integrating large scale simulation with data analytics.

“We also gain access to a pool of research software development expertise beyond that available at any single partner university, allowing us to develop fast and efficient scientific software for this and future supercomputers. The facility will support projects in nanomaterial design, quantum technologies and fluid dynamics, with applications in new electronic devices, energy generation building design and many other areas.”