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UK government officials have discussed funding a supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh, just six months after a similar major computing project at the university was cancelled.
Officials have considered placing a new state-owned supercomputer at the university as part of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's upcoming computing strategy, according to people familiar with the discussions.
exhaustion Parts of a former supercomputer worth £800 million At the University of Edinburgh after taking power in July, alleging that the Conservatives had failed to allocate funds to it while they were in power.
The move in August sparked a backlash from the technology and scientific community, which said it would weaken Britain's ambitions in those sectors.
The Prime Minister's plan to increase the country's computing power 20-fold by 2030, Announced this weekhas renewed interest in the axed “exascale” project in the Scottish capital. Exascale supercomputing is defined as the ability to produce one billion billion operations per second.
“Officials remain keen to press ahead with the Edinburgh supercomputer project,” said one person familiar with internal discussions.
Another official said that the government is looking for ways to cancel the decision to stop operating the supercomputer.
The existing facility, on which the university has already spent £30 million, could be repurposed for a new supercomputer project, the official said, adding that “the kit already exists.”
On Wednesday, Labour's Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Murray, told the Scottish Parliament that the Edinburgh supercomputer had never been “cancelled” but had instead been “re-evaluated”.
“We have been very clear with the University of Edinburgh that the project has not been cancelled… but it has been re-evaluated and will go through the spending review process which has commenced and will conclude by the summer,” the MP for Edinburgh South said. Detailed spending plans for the coming years.
“I hope we get to that point as we approach the spending review… I hope the investment that has been made will not be wasted,” Murray said.
Starmer said this week that his administration would seek to increase government-owned computing capacity 20-fold by the end of the decade, and soon start work on a “brand new supercomputer”.
He did not reveal the location of this supercomputer or the size of the government’s investment in the project.
The government said on Monday it would set out a ten-year computing roadmap in the spring, which will include commitments on future investments in national computing infrastructure.
Exascale supercomputers are widely seen as essential to the development of artificial intelligence in Britain, as well as performing more advanced scientific modeling than ever before.
The US already has three fully operational exascale computers, while China is understood to have two in operation, with a third in development. Japan, the European Union and France are building their first exascale computers, which are expected to be available online in the next few years.
The UK dropped out of the world's top 50 most powerful computers in November, according to a respected index called the Top500.
Asked whether an exascale computer would be rolled out in Edinburgh in the next six months, British Science Minister Peter Kyle said on Monday: “In the spring I will announce another strategy on computing.”
“I want to make sure we have the right, flexible and sustainable investment that our country needs when it comes to public computing,” he added. A person close to Kyle said the government's position on the canceled Edinburgh exascale project “has not changed”.
“While the action plan focused specifically on artificial intelligence, we also committed to developing a long-term computing plan that takes into account the full range of scientific needs, including exascale computing,” the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Technology said.
“As mentioned earlier, the computing programs announced under the previous government were not fully funded, which is why the projects did not go ahead.”
