HPC for industry

Gina Finch of The Data Lab explains how this Scottish innovation centre creates economic benefit through data innovation.

Unlocking the value from data is the key to creating new opportunities for economic growth. Scotland is making a name for itself on the global stage as a centre for expertise in data science and a leader in the field of data innovation and exploitation. Our unique landscape of leading industry and university institutions has attracted businesses and talent alike, with industry and academia working together to innovate and create new opportunities for economic growth.

EPCC took part in Datafest18, the Data Science Festival, this year by running our own fringe event in Edinburgh and exhibiting at the Data Summit Conference.

Fringe events are key to the success of Datafest, and with over 40 running across Scotland there was plenty to choose from. We ran a small event to deliver key insights on the new developments in the application of supercomputing to large-scale data analytics and machine learning. Our colleagues gave a series of talks and attendees also had an opportunity to see a live supercomputer in action via Wee Archie. The event allowed for plenty of questions and in-depth conversations, notably around deep learning and using neural networks to solve real-life problems. It closed with Dr Adam Carter providing some further details on what makes a data scientist, and the various routes to development and further training.

Yesterday saw the launch of the Machine Intelligence Garage, a new initiative by the Digital Catapult, aimed at facilitating access to advanced computational resources for machine learning start-ups. We are playing a significant role within the programme.

EPCC has received £2.4m from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part its £20m investment in six new Tier-2 HPC centres.

Our MSc programmes' industry-based dissertation projects enhance our students’ skills and employability by tackling a real-world project, gaining workplace experience, exploring potential career paths and building relationships with local companies.

Europe’s major HPC centres have joined with software vendors and application experts to create the Fortissimo Marketplace, which offers cloud-based HPC services to industry. 

The CodeOpt Scotland programme is designed to increase company competitiveness by optimising the performance of business-critical software.

SHAPE is a pan-European programme that promotes high performance computing adoption by SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises), and is supported as part of the PRACE initiative. So far SHAPE has helped 29 companies benefit from HPC.

Fortissimo is a collaborative EC-funded project that enables European SMEs to be more competitive globally through the use of simulation services running on a high performance computing (HPC) cloud infrastructure.