DiRAC

UK supercomputing research facilities

Distributed Research using Advanced Computing (DiRAC) is an integrated supercomputing facility used for research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology in the United Kingdom. DiRAC makes use of multi-core processors and provides a variety of computer architectures for use by the research community.^[2][3]

Development

• DiRAC: DiRAC was initially funded in 2009 with an investment of £12 million from the Government of the United Kingdom's Large Facilities Capital Fund combined with funds from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and a consortium of universities in the UK.^[4]
• DiRAC II: In 2012, the DiRAC facility was upgraded with a further £15 million^[2][3] of UK government capital to create DiRAC II which had five installations.
• DiRAC-3: was launched in 2021,^[5] with three services offered at four sites:^[6]
  • Data intensive service, jointly hosted by the universities of Cambridge (part share in the "Cumulus" HPC platform) and Leicester (Data Intensive 3 and Data Intensive 2.5x supercomputers)
  • Memory intensive service, hosted by Durham University at the Institute for Computational Cosmology (Memory Intensive 3 "COSMA8" and Memory Intensive 2.5 "COSMA7" supercomputers)
  • Extreme scaling service, hosted by the University of Edinburgh (Extreme Scaling "Tursa" supercomputer)

Paul Dirac

"DiRAC" is a backronym which honours the theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Paul Dirac.^[7]

References

1. "Mark Wilkinson". DiRAC. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
2. "DiRAC - Science and Technology Facilities Council". stfc.ac.uk.
3. "What makes DiRAC special". dirac.ac.uk.^{[permanent dead link]}
4. "Edinburgh DiRAC Resource Grant". UK Research and Innovation. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
5. "DiRAC-3 Launch Day". DiRAC. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
6. "Resources". DiRAC. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
7. Dalitz, Richard H.; Peierls, Rudolf (1986). "Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac. 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 32. London: Royal Society: 139–185. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1986.0006. JSTOR 770111.