Research Computing Services

UK's most powerful supercomputer Isambard-AI comes online The Isambard-AI supercomputer is made fully operational as the government unveils fresh AI plans.

Yesterday, at the University of Bristol, the AI Research Resource (AIRR) officially launched — bringing serious compute power to UK researchers.

It includes Dawn at Cambridge and Isambard-AI, one of Europe’s most powerful AI supercomputers.

More from the BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Research Computing Services team swapped servers for nostalgia yesterday at an away day at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.

Great day for learning, sharing ideas, and connecting as a team!

Finally, we're proud sponsors this year of the #ISC25 Women in HPC programme.

Go team RCS!

#ISC25

At another poster session, Deepak Aggarwal shared his work, “Scaling AI Research Capabilities Through National Federated Infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, Surbhi Goel from the Institute of Computing for Climate Science presenting her poster, “Benchmarking Platform for Machine Learning-Based Spin-up of Ocean Model NEMO.”

We’re having a fantastic time at #ISC25! The conference has just started, and already members of Research Computing Services have been on stage showcasing the incredible work we do.

Here’s Christopher Edsall presenting at the Dell Community meeting on the work we've been doing this year.

Thank you to our Software Engineer, Simon Hartley, who delivered our lightning talk during the sponsors' session at #DurhamHPCDays. Great work!

It’s been a busy time at #DurhamHPCDays for the team. Our Systems Engineer, Astrid, spoke about working on establishing a new #WHPC chapter. Meanwhile, Joe from @iccscambridge.bsky.social mbridge.bsky.social gave a talk on HPC and AI in weather and climate research.

We’re proud to sponsor this year’s #DurhamHPCDays and to see our own Tom Meltzer kicking things off.

In our last RSE seminar for the academic year, Miles Cranmer (DAMTP, University of Cambridge) will be speaking about Symbolic Regression for Model Discovery in Python and Julia.

Thursday 5th June at 1pm in the JJ Thomson Seminar Room, Maxwell Centre and on Zoom.

rse.group.cam.ac.uk/seminars

Research Computing Services was proud to host the HPC Special Interest Group (HPC-SIG) Annual Meeting on May 21–22 2025 at the West Hub, University of Cambridge.

The event brought together UK academics and research computing professionals to explore the future of HPC and HTC.

🔗 bit.ly/44RlQxR

YouTube video by HPSF Numerical Relativity with AMReX - Miren Radia, University of Cambridge

Dr Miren Radia, Research Software Engineer at Research Computing Services, presents his work on numerical relativity software during the AMReX session at the High Performance Software Foundation conference held in Chicago in May this year.

#HPC #NumericalRelativity #AMReX #ResearchSoftware

We look forward to seeing you at the RSE Seminar this week.

Liam Pattinson and Peter Hill of York Plasma Institute will be telling us about Fortitude: A Modern Fortran Linter.

Thursday 22nd May at 1pm in JJ Thomson Seminar Room, Maxwell Centre and on Zoom.

rse.group.cam.ac.uk/seminars

Featuring Miren Radia (bottom left photo), one of our team's Research Software Engineers, who spoke at #HPSF on Numerical Relativity with AMReX.

We look forward to seeing you at the RSE Seminar, where Peichao Qin (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge) will be speaking on "A Modular Character Recognition Solution for Ancient Scripts".

Thursday 15th May at 1pm, JJ Thomson Seminar Room, Maxwell Centre and on Zoom.

Congratulations, @amkasprzyk.bsky.social! We're excited to work with you!

#AIRR #Dawn

Under the bonnet at Dawn, the UK's fastest AI supercomputer At the University of Cambridge, AI is being used to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing humanity

Discover how Dawn is powering groundbreaking research across climate science, biodiversity, and more: bit.ly/4jQDTs4

#AI #ClimateAction #Supercomputing

Strongest hints yet of biological activity outside the solar system Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious.

Space breakthrough!

@uniofcam.bsky.social astronomers have detected signs of a possible biosignature beyond our solar system 🌌👽

This groundbreaking work was powered by our system – the Cambridge Service for Data Driven Discovery, operated by Research Computing Services.

bit.ly/4izTIm3

Registration for the Durham HPC Days is open: pay.durham.ac.uk/event-durham.... The programme is also getting there: durham.readthedocs.io/en/latest/hp... We now have 4.5 days packed with talks, tutorials and workshops!

🎉 On March 27, something pretty special happened in Cambridge! After months of prep, the @womeninhpc.org Cambridge & East Anglia chapter teamed up with the @society-rse.org East of England group to host an incredible day of sharing, connecting, and showing off the amazing work of our community.

We can share this week that the UK SKAO Regional Centre has officially been certified as a Version 0.1 Node — a milestone in the development of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) programme 🌌🔭

Check out more about the SKAO here: www.skao.int/en

👏 Huge thanks to everyone involved!

At the final RSE Seminar of this term, Miles Cranmer (DAMTP, University of Cambridge) will be speaking about Symbolic Regression for Model Discovery in Python and Julia.

Thursday 20th March at 1pm in the Rayleigh Seminar Room, Maxwell Centre and on Zoom.

rse.group.cam.ac.uk/seminars

At this week's RSE Seminar Sarah Jaffa - (University of Manchester) will be speaking about project management by and for RSEs.

Thursday 13th March at 1pm in the Rayleigh Seminar Room, Maxwell Centre and on Zoom.

The full schedule for this term’s talks can be seen at rse.group.cam.ac.uk/seminars

At this week's RSE Seminar, Jennifer Cobbe (Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge) will be speaking to us about Governance and accountability in data-driven supply chains.

On Thursday 6th March at 1pm in the Rayleigh Seminar Room, Maxwell Centre and on Zoom.

rse.group.cam.ac.uk/seminars

This week our team welcomed the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Rt Hon Pat McFadden MP, to tour the Dawn supercomputer and discuss the ways in which AI can transform public services and healthcare.
Read more about the visit 👉 tinyurl.com/58zs6kbk

Our colleagues at Women in HPC Cambridge & East Anglia and RSE East of England are thrilled to announce their first joint event! 🎉

📅 Date: Thursday, 27 March 2025
⏰ Time: 12:00 - 17:30
📍 Location: West Hub, JJ Thomson Ave, Cambridge CB3 0US

👉 Register here: forms.gle/Zg5S8DhBi7GQ...

It was a privilege to welcome @feryalclark.bsky.social, Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, to the University of Cambridge West Cambridge Data Centre, where director Paul Calleja gave a tour of Dawn.

We're thrilled to share an exciting milestone for Research Computing Services! We've officially received the first shipment of Intel's Gaudi 3 in the UK, marking a significant step forward in our capabilities to support machine learning, deep learning, and large-scale data analytics.

Interesting panel about FAIRer DRI. With our friends and colleagues Mark Wilkinson from DiRAC, Alan Real from ARC and Marion Weinzierl @rcscambridge.bsky.social