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The Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) Hartree Centre has introduced a cutting-edge supercomputer, Mary Coombs, designed to propel UK industry's innovation using artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing.
Situated within the STFC’s £30 million Supercomputing Centre at Daresbury Laboratory, this technological marvel is named after Mary Coombs, the pioneering UK commercial programmer. It aims to equip businesses and public sector organisations with unrivalled computation power and expertise.
The Hartree Centre, located at Sci-Tech Daresbury in Liverpool City Region, stands as the UK's beacon for industrial supercomputing and digital innovation. Housing some of the UK’s foremost experts, it aids businesses in tackling complex challenges, transforming ideas into market-ready innovations that bolster the economy and society.
Professor Kate Royse, Director of the Hartree Centre, highlighted the supercomputer’s potential to turn ambitious concepts into tangible solutions across diverse industries. From drug discovery to climate research, the facility promises to process immense datasets swiftly, enhancing efficiency without the need for internal supercomputing expertise.
“By giving industry access to world-class AI and high performance computing, and to the leading skills of our Hartree Centre scientists, Mary Coombs can help businesses innovate with confidence, accelerate research, and bring solutions to market more quickly, delivering tangible benefits for our economy and society.”
Delivering tenfold the efficiency of its predecessor, Scafell Pike, while being more energy-efficient, Mary Coombs represents a significant leap forward. The 24.41 petaflop system can process 24.41 quadrillion calculations per second — a task that would take a single calculation per second nearly 773 million years to match! Primarily GPU-based, it’s designed for AI workloads and advanced visualisation, heralding a new era for the Hartree Centre's computational abilities.
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, emphasises the region’s burgeoning reputation in advanced computing, citing the potential ripple effect of the pioneering work at Daresbury.
“From cutting edge AI research to breakthroughs in health innovation and climate science, the impact of the pioneering work happening at Daresbury can be felt far beyond our region, and this new supercomputer will turbocharge those capabilities even further .”
Paul Vernon, Head of STFC Daresbury Laboratory, underscores the strategic importance of this new facility, noting its role in fortifying the North West's position as a hub for advanced technology and digital skills.
The Mary Coombs system forms a cornerstone of the £210 million Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) programme, partnering with IBM to advance digital technologies like AI, quantum computing, and data analytics across the UK.
