HPCx was a

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

(actually a

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study the magnetosphere * Asteroid cluster, a small ...

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

eServer p5 575 high-performance servers) located at the

Daresbury Laboratory Daresbury Laboratory is a scientific research laboratory based at Sci-Tech Daresbury campus near Daresbury in Halton, Cheshire, England. The laboratory began operations in 1962 and was officially opened on 16 June 1967 as the Daresbury Nuclea ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England. It is bordered by Merseyside to the north-west, Greater Manchester to the north-east, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire to the south-east, and Shrop ...

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. The supercomputer was maintained by the HPCx Consortium, UoE HPCX Ltd, which was led by the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

EPCC EPCC, formerly the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, is a supercomputing centre based at the University of Edinburgh. Since its foundation in 1990, its stated mission has been to ''accelerate the effective exploitation of novel computing th ...

, with the

Science and Technology Facilities Council The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is a United Kingdom government agency that carries out research in science and engineering, and funds UK research in areas including particle physics, nuclear physics, space science and astr ...

and

. The project was funded by

EPSRC The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 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 univers ...

. The supercomputer was primarily used for various large-scale simulations such as molecular systems, crystalline structures, and coastal environments.

History

The HPCx was the flagship UK academic supercomputer from its creation in December 2002, to 2007 when the larger

HECToR In Greek mythology, Hector (; , ) was a Trojan prince, a hero and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. He is a major character in Homer's ''Iliad'', where he leads the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, killing c ...

system was installed. It was a joint venture ran under the Daresbury Laboratory of the Central Laboratory for Research Councils (CLRC) and Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) at the University of Edinburgh

, who gave the college around by 2004. The HPCx service ended in January 2010.

Performance

The HPCx's service was divided into three phases, each with improved performance rates.

Phase one

Phase 1 of the HPCx service opened on 9 December 2002, although people had been using the service a month prior. During the first phase, the HPCx consisted of 1,280 IBM POWER4 p690 processors with 1.28 terabytes of memory, the “Colony” switch and 18 terabytes of high-speed disk, performing at a peak rate of around 6.6 teraflops.

Phase Three

By November 2006, the HPCx was given an additional 1,200 processors, leading to the performance of the supercomputer to rise to a peak of 15.4 teraflops and an average of around 12 teraflops.

References

External links

www.hpcx.ac.uk

EPCC Website
{{super-compu-stub Cluster computing Computer science education in the United Kingdom Research institutes in Cheshire Supercomputers