High Performance Computing

ACRC HPC systems

High Performance Computing

The University's HPC systems can be used to accelerate your computational research. High-performance computing (HPC) is the ability to process data and perform complex calculations at high speeds. Today, HPC is essential for many types of workloads, including AI/ML, physical simulations, and big data analysis.

 
University of Bristol HPC facilities

The ACRC operates a number of different HPC systems each suited to different workloads. All of our clusters run a linux operating system.
If you are unfamiliar with using linux we offer training courses. You can follow the intro to linux  training materials at your own pace.
 
For an overview of the current HPC systems at the University please watch our new  'Introduction to HPC at University of Bristol' | Microsoft Stream‌.
You can also download the Introduction to HPC at University of Bristol slides (PowerPoint with narration).

BlueCrystal Phase 4

BlueCrystal Phase 4 (BC4) is available to all HPC users at the University of Bristol it is capable of up to 600 trillion calculations per second. BC4 is capable of supporting large parallel jobs and has a number of Nvidia P100 GPUs.  

BluePebble

BluePebble is available to researchers across the University of Bristol, it is targeted for high throughput computing, and also has a number of GPUs and accelerators, large memory and other specialised requirements. 

BlueCryo 

The ACRC team installed and currently maintains the BBSRC funded BlueCryo high-performance computing (HPC) cluster dedicated to image processing for the GW4 Cryo-EM facility which supports pioneering cryo-microsopy research at the University of Bristol.  

National HPC Facilities

Isambard 3

The new GW4 supercomputer Isambard 3, will soon be open to UK based academics from all disciplines wishing to utilise its NVIDIA Grace CPU superchips and powerful 55,000 cores. 

60% of the compute resources on Isambard 3 are available via UKRI 'Access to HPC facilities' calls and the autumn 2024 call is now open for applications. 

You can apply for large scale compute resources for up to 12 months within this call, both on Isambard 3 and on ARCHER 2. 

Register now to attend UKRI's webinar on 7 November from 11.00am - 12.00 noon. It is open to anybody interested in applying for the Access to HPC facilities call.  

Isambard AI 

Isambard AI is in the process of being installed and configured at the National Composites Centre, near Bristol.  

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)* will build and deliver the new system with the next generation HPE Cray EX supercomputers and over 5,000 state-of-the-art NVIDIA GH200 superchips. The advanced technologies and design will allow Isambard-AI to reach up to 200 quadrillion calculations per second.

Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith, Director of the Isambard National Research Facility at the University of Bristol, said: "Isambard-AI represents a huge leap forward for AI computational power in the UK. Today Isambard-AI would rank within the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world and, when in operation later in 2024, it will be one of the most powerful AI systems for open science anywhere.

JADE (Joint Academic Data science Endeavour) 

JADE  is one of the EPSRC Tier-2 HPC facilities. The system design exploits the capabilities of NVIDIA's DGX-1 Deep Learning System which has eight of its newest Tesla P100 GPUs tightly coupled by its high-speed NVlink interconnect. The DGX-1 runs optimized versions of many standard machine learning software packages such as Caffe, TensorFlow, Theano and Torch. Free access is available to academic researchers working in the EPSRC domain and from some UK universities; academic users from other domains and institutions can purchase access. Industry access is available.

ARCHER - UK National Supercomputer

The ARCHER National supercomputer is primarily funded by EPSRC and NERC. If you wish to use Archer you will need to apply for resources on the ARCHER system. It is often useful to have performed test runs on BlueCrystal 4 to support your application.

 

An overview of the UK's National HPC Facilities for research, their capabilities and access criteria can be found on hpc-uk.ac.uk.

  
 

2022 ACRC News

New 'Introduction to HPC at University of Bristol' video 

minimalmarkers: Accelerating a genotyping script from 10 days to 34 seconds to reduce its environmental impact. Read how this research acceleration was achieved with Research Software Enginneering support.

 

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