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23/10/2019

Left to right: Dominik Ulmer, Vice President for EMEA Operations at Cray, Pascal Barbolosi Vice President for EMEA Sales at Cray, EPSRC Executive Chair Professor Lynn Gladden, NERC Executive Chair Professor Duncan Wingham

23 October 2019

Cray has been awarded the contract to supply the hardware for the next national supercomputer, ARCHER2, following a procurement exercise delivered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

ARCHER2 represents a significant step forward in capability for the UK’s science community, with the system expected to sit among the fastest fully general purpose (CPU only) systems in the world when it comes into service in May 2020. It will be able to achieve performance levels that are eleven times higher (on average, across a range of benchmarking codes) than the current ARCHER system.

The £79 million new resource will be housed at the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Computing Facility. The project is being delivered and supported by UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

EPSRC Executive Chair, Professor Lynn Gladden, said: “ARCHER2 will be an important resource for the UK’s research community, providing them with the capability to pursue investigations which are not possible using current resources. 

“The new system delivered by Cray will greatly increase the potential for researchers to make discoveries across fields such as physics, chemistry, healthcare and technology development.”

Dominik Ulmer, Vice President for EMEA Operations at Cray and EPSRC Executive Chair Professor Lynn Gladden sign the contract for Cray to provide the hardware for ARCHER2

Peter Ungaro, President and Chief Executive of Cray, said: “We’re pleased to continue supporting UKRI’s mission and provide the most advanced high-end computing resources for the UK’s science and research endeavours.

“Across the industry, computing workloads are growing and the compute status quo no longer works as we move into the Exascale Era, which brings with it new demanding workloads and workflows. ARCHER2 will be the first Shasta system to find its home in Europe, and its next-gen architecture will provide UK and neighboring scientists and researchers the ability to meet their research requirements across a broad range of disciplines, faster.”