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]
| Named after | Paul Dirac |
|---|---|
| Established | 2009 |
| Location | |
| Services | Supercomputing |
Director | Mark Wilkinson[1] |
Parent organization | Science and Technology Facilities Council |
| Website | dirac |
Development
edit- 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
edit"DiRAC" is a backronym which honours the theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Paul Dirac.[7]
References
edit- ^ "Mark Wilkinson". DiRAC. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
- ^ a b "DiRAC - Science and Technology Facilities Council". stfc.ac.uk.
- ^ a b "What makes DiRAC special". dirac.ac.uk.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Edinburgh DiRAC Resource Grant". UK Research and Innovation. Retrieved 18 September 2024.
- ^ "DiRAC-3 Launch Day". DiRAC. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
- ^ "Resources". DiRAC. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
- ^ 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.