EPCC News 99

From our Director

We have been very busy over the first six months of this year – in particular with beginning some of the new activities we reported in the previous issue. A key one has been the start of the UK AI Factory Antenna, and it already feels like we’re properly engaged with our many friends in the European Union again. 

We have also been very fortunate to receive significant funding from DSIT and UKRI, which has allowed us to install a large upgrade to the new Cirrus service –now part of the network of UKRI National Compute Resources and our first fully solid-state, large-scale storage system as part of the National AI Data Infrastructure Network. We’re also running infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the first time. 

But EPCC is much more than an infrastructure organisation. I hope the wide variety of articles in this issue demonstrates this through the work of the Software Sustainability Institute, our many outreach activities, our work on environmental sustainability, and skills development. I’m particularly proud of the work that our HPC Systems Team has led for a number of years with our System Administration Internships and Graduate Apprenticeships. 

Hopefully by the time you read this the procurement of the Next National Supercomputer will have started. I look forward to reporting more on that in future issues.

Mark Parsons, EPCC Director