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HECToR
High End Computing Terascale Resource

HECToR is the UK's new high-end computing resource located at the University of Edinburgh's Advanced Computing Facility. The supercomputer is a Cray XT4 with a current peak performance of 63 teraflops, rising to 250 teraflops in 2009. A further upgrade will be introduced in 2011 to maintain its position as one of the most powerful research machines in Europe.

• to provide a world-class capability computing service for UK-based academic research;
• to support the development of innovative computational technologies;
• to help industry and commerce to make effective use of high-end computing;
• to promote collaboration between research teams in the UK and the rest of the world.

The HECToR service is provided through a consortium of Partners, including NAG, each selected for their specialised expertise.

NAG and HECToR

NAG began working with the HECToR team in October 2003 by offering technical advice and market intelligence to the project. Subsequently, NAG was chosen to design and undertake the benchmarking process, which played a significant part in the project's technical selection process. In March 2007 NAG was officially announced as provider of computational science and engineering support to the project. With NAG's assistance in porting and tuning, a number of research groups with computationally-intensive projects will move their codes to the HECToR system beginning in October 2007.

A significant feature of the agreement is that NAG provides both a centralized team of HPC experts at NAG's Oxford offices and a distributed team embedded in HECToR-affiliated research groups throughout the UK; in total around 20 full-time equivalent people per year.

Image 1. HECToR XT4 units under construction (March, 2007) at the Cray facility at Chippewa Falls, MN. Note that the finished cabinets will have proper cladding. (Photos: Cray Inc)
Image 2. HECToR XT4 units at the University of Edinburgh. (Photos: P. Tuffy, University of Edinburgh)

Support

HECToR Users will be able to apply to the distributed CSE team for dedicated support for their project. This support would be for periods of between six months and two years, and is intended to help users port their codes to HECToR and improve the performance and functionality of these codes. We will publish regular calls for proposals throughout the life of the project.

Training

NAG also provides a range of training courses to help users of HECToR get the most out of the system. The training programme covers topics ranging from getting started on HECToR to improving code performance on distributed memory machines. Although aimed mainly at HECToR users, the courses may also be of interest to a wider community. The majority of the training courses are held at NAG's offices in Oxford, with practical sessions hosted in Edinburgh on HECToR itself. Attendance is free for HECToR users and researchers sponsored by one of the research councils, EPSRC, NERC or BBSRC.

For more details and to register please visit the HECToR Training webpage.

HECToR News

There are a number of dedicated email lists for people interested in being kept up to date with HECToR. Details of how to sign up can be found here.