Scotland will become home to the UK's most powerful supercomputer, with up to £750 million for the project confirmed in the Spending Review
Scotland will be home to the UK’s most powerful supercomputer to drive forward innovations that grow our economy and ensure people are better off, putting Edinburgh at heart of the UK’s plans to unlock a decade of national renewal through artificial intelligence.
The news comes after the Prime Minister kicked off London Tech Week by unveiling £1 billion of extra funding to scale up the country’s AI compute power twenty-fold. Following that announcement, the Chancellor has now confirmed up to a further £750 million to build the UK’s new national supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh, strengthening Britain’s position as an AI-maker and research power, with researchers and start-ups backed to deliver new waves of innovations and discoveries.
Edinburgh’s new supercomputer will give scientists from across the UK the compute power they need for cutting edge research and making the next big breakthrough – whether that’s personalised medical treatments, making air travel more sustainable, or modelling climate change. This will form part of the Chancellor’s commitment to investing in Britain’s renewal at the Spending Review today (Wednesday), ensuring the British people are better off – from better health to economic growth.
The supercomputer will work alongside the AI research resource, a network of the UK’s most powerful supercomputers that were built to bolster scientific research. The AI Research Resource, which is due to come into operation soon, is already being used to research Alzheimer’s vaccines and treatments for cancer by simulating how drugs work inside the body and ‘testing’ millions of potential drugs virtually to speed up the creation of new medicines.
Ahead of that moment, the Isambard system has this week been ranked in the top ten globally and top 5 in Europe for publicly available supercomputers. According to the latest Top500 rankings, it also ranks as a leader in terms of efficiency, setting a clear benchmark of how the UK government is delivering on its AI ambitions while driving forward its mission to become a clean energy superpower.
UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Peter Kyle said:
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said:
Secretary of State for Scotland Ian Murray said:
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, Professor Sir Peter Mathieson said:
The new supercomputer will vastly exceed the capacity of the UK’s current national supercomputer, ARCHER2.
The government will set out more details about the system in our upcoming Compute Roadmap, which we will publish this summer. It will outline the government’s strategic approach to building world-class compute infrastructure in the UK - which will include the new national supercomputer in Edinburgh and our investment to expand the AI Research Resource by at least 20 times by 2030.
DSIT and UKRI will work to ensure that the Edinburgh supercomputer’s system size represents value for money on our investment and meets the needs of the diverse user groups of the UK’s compute infrastructure.