Centre to Help UK Business Exploit OpenPOWER Systems

A new collaboration between IBM, NVIDIA, Mellanox and the STFC Hartree Centre is set to deliver significant competitive advantages to UK companies by tackling the challenges of increasing performance and productivity while minimising energy consumption. The UK's first POWER Acceleration and Design Centre (PADC) aims to improve modelling, simulation and big data analytical capabilities on IBM’s OpenPOWER systems.

“The goal is simple – to boost productivity, drive growth and create jobs,” STFC Hartree Centre acting Director Dr Peter Allan said.“The PADC will help industry and academia take advantage of IBM and NVIDIA’s technological leadership in supercomputing and the Hartree Centre's expertise and experience in delivering solutions to real-world problems. It will also provide industry and academia with access to the Hartree Centre’s research capabilities and network of global partners. The PADC will help the Government's ambition to provide world-leading facilities to improve the productivity of UK business.”

The Hartree Centre, working with IBM, already has a history of collaborating on research and development with industry and academic institutions, and in providing access to its supercomputing facilities. These services are now being extended to help organisations define application design and optimisation projects and will assist in bringing together an ecosystem of computational scientists and engineers with expertise in specific domains such as chemistry, fluid dynamics, structures, and acoustics.

 “This new POWER Acceleration and Design Centre demonstrates IBM’s commitment to expanding the software ecosystem around OpenPOWER. The centre extends and complements the Acceleration and Design Centres in Jülich, Germany, and Montpellier, France, to a new class of industrial and commercial organisations,” said Dave Turek, IBM’s Vice President of HPC. “To that end, establishing it at the Hartree Centre is in recognition of its successful engagement with industry and its record in commercialising technological developments.”