March 26, 2024 — The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has signed an agreement with Lenovo for the installation of a new state-of-the-art supercomputer for the STFC Hartree Centre.

Ten times more powerful than its predecessor, but using less electricity thanks to Lenovo’s direct water cooling, the new supercomputer will power AI research for UK industry. The new supercomputer is part of the Hartree Centre’s £210 million Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) program, which provides UK industry access to state-of-the-art digital technologies and expertise.

The supercomputer will support the HNCDI’s rapidly expanding supercomputing and AI activities, and will be installed later this year at its new £30 million supercomputing centre, currently under construction.

A Leap in Supercomputing Processing Power

A 44.7 petaflop system, the Lenovo ThinkSystem Neptune will perform more than 44 quadrillion floating point operations (calculations) per second. For context, if you were to carry out one calculation per second, it would take nearly 1,400 million years to reach this number.

The new GPU-based system (graphics processing unit) is perfect for AI workloads, and marks a significant leap for the Hartree Centre’s capabilities, with 10 times the processing power of its current system, Scafell Pike.

Furthermore, it will be more power-efficient, taking up less space and using less electricity per unit of performance. The new supercomputer uses innovative warm water cooling, which can reduce energy demands by up to 40% while boosting performance by up to 10%.

Powering UK Industry with AI

Located at STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory, at Sci-Tech Daresbury in the Liverpool City Region, the Hartree Centre is the UK’s only supercomputing centre dedicated to industry engagement. This capability will drive forward innovation in industry use cases and applications.

Its HNCDI program plays a vital role in equipping businesses with skills and technical knowledge to adopt emerging digital technologies, including supercomputing, quantum computing and AI. It is enabling productivity, innovation and growth in UK organizations through access to these advanced supercomputing technologies, which are typically available only to academia and large-scale industry.

Solving Global Challenges

At the HNCDI, the new supercomputer will be strategically positioned to contribute to discovery-led industrial research, focusing on solutions to global challenges in areas such as:

• Weather and climate modeling
• Cleaner energy initiatives
• Drug discovery
• Health technologies
• New materials
• Automotive advancements
• Legal applications

This includes the Hartree Centre’s continued collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which is using the centre to research new reactors for clean nuclear fusion energy.

Ultimately, the new supercomputer will reduce the time and cost associated with making research breakthroughs. This includes research for organisations such as the Met Office, Unilever and Rolls Royce, which the Hartree Centre has continued to work with over the last decade.

Kate Royse, Director, STFC Hartree Centre, said: “We are very excited to be working with Lenovo on our next generation of supercomputer at the Hartree Centre. Our mission is to equip UK industry with the knowledge, skills and compute needed to fully unlock the potential of advanced digital technologies. With our new supercomputer we will be able to support UK industry in the use of big data and AI technologies to enable UK businesses to take a leading role internationally on the responsible adoption and exploitation of AI technology.”

About the STFC Hartree Centre

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre’s mission is to transform UK industry through high performance computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. As part of UK Research and Innovation, the Hartree Centre is home to some of the most advanced computing, data and AI technologies in the UK.

From early-stage SMEs to international corporations, Hartree Centre experts work with industry and the research community to address real life challenges and accelerate the adoption of high-performance technologies, delivering transformative gains in performance, productivity and time to market.

About Lenovo

Lenovo is a US$62 billion revenue global technology powerhouse, ranked #217 in the Fortune Global 500, employing 77,000 people around the world, and serving millions of customers every day in 180 markets. Focused on a bold vision to deliver Smarter Technology for All, Lenovo has built on its success as the world’s largest PC company by further expanding into growth areas that fuel the advancement of ‘New IT’ technologies (client, edge, cloud, network, and intelligence) including server, storage, mobile, software, solutions, and services. This transformation together with Lenovo’s world-changing innovation is building a more inclusive, trustworthy, and smarter future for everyone, everywhere. Lenovo is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange under Lenovo Group Limited (HKSE: 992)(ADR: LNVGY).

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Source: STFC Hartree Centre