EPCC Director Mark Parsons' talk for the EPCC event 'Data-Driven Innovation for Industry' (27/2/19)

1. EPCC
AT THE HEART OF DATA DRIVEN INNOVATION FOR BUSINESS
Professor Mark Parsons
EPCC Director
Associate Dean for e-Research
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2. EPCC in 2019
• In top 3 of Europe’s supercomputing centres
• 29 years old – ~110 staff
• Fully self-sustaining - £15m turnover in FY17/18
• UK National HPC Service provider
• Wide range of work spanning supercomputing
and data science
• Two MSc programmes – “HPC” and “HPC with
Data Science”
• Known worldwide for its industry collaboration
programmes in HPC and Data Analytics
• Worked with several thousand companies
since 1990
• Key component of City Deal DDI programme
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3. EPCC activities
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Facilities and
HPC services
Super-
computing
Research
Collaborating
with Industry
European
projects
Teaching and
training
Visitor
Programmes

4. • EPCC’s Advanced Computing Facility houses
variety of leading edge IT systems
• UK national services
• ARCHER 118,080 cores (Cray XC30)
• DiRAC 20,256 (HPE 8600)
• UK Research Data Facility (25Pb Disk / 50Pb Tape)
• Cirrus 13,248 cores – Tier 2 HPC / industry system
• Scottish National Data Safe Haven
• Local services
• ULTRA – SGI UV2000 – 8TB memory
• LIndy and WIndy clusters
ACF Principal services
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• Funded by EPSRC and NERC
• £90m service opened in 2013
• 5,000+ users since opening
• 3,500+ users in past 12 months

5. The Cirrus Tier 2 HPC and Industry system
• SGI ICE XA / HPE 8600 system
• Bought for
• EPCC industry activities
• Edinburgh Genomics – Scotland’s
“Whole Human Genome Factory”
• Expanded in March 2017 to 13,000+
cores as part to become EPSRC
National Tier 2 HPC service
• Over 80 companies have used
on pay-per-use model
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6. Edinburgh & SE Scotland City Region Deal
• In 2016 EPCC helped develop a
“Science and Innovation Audit”
• Identified strengths in our region for
Data Driven Innovation
• City Deals are funding from UK and
Scottish Governments
• Aim is to stimulate economic growth in
UK regions
• £1.1 billion Edinburgh Region City
Deal announced in Summer 2017
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7. What is our City Region?
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8. What is a City Deal?
• There are five key commitment themes within City Deals
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Research,
Development
and
Innovation
Programme
Employability
and Skills
Programme
Transport Culture
Housing
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9. Aims of City Deal Data Driven Innovation programme
• Capitalise on our expertise in Data Driven Innovation
• Make Edinburgh City Region the “Data Capital of Europe”
• Create a trusted public-private-third sector partnership
• Unlock economic opportunities worth £5 billion+
• Train 100,000 people in data technologies
• Develop an underpinning infrastructure – the World Class Data
Infrastructure (WCDI)
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10. EPCC is at the heart of
the City Deal programme
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11. T.R.A.D.E. and City Deal
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Talent
Available
datasets and
increased pool of
talent & expertise
to leverage
service
innovation within
major
organisations
Research
A globally
competitive DDI
talent pool trained
in using high
quality, diverse
datasets and
leveraging our
world-class
research
Adoption
Broad DDI
adoption across
the private and
public sectors to
take the brakes
off regional
growth
Datasets
Datasets and
increased pool of
talent & expertise
to leverage
service
innovation
Entrepreneurship
A regional data
science
innovation cluster
implementing a
coherent
entrepreneurship
strategy
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12. The “World Class Data Infrastructure”
• City Deal includes capital investment for WCDI
• New high resiliency data centre room, computers, storage,
networking and software
• Data lake and private Cloud architecture
• Will support work with complex, high volume, real-time datasets
from across City Region and beyond
• Supports public and private, open and confidential data
• All 10 sectors targeted through City Deal will use the WCDI
• Including Companies, Schools, Local Authorities, Scottish Government …
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13. Advanced Computing Facility
• The ‘ACF’ will host the WCDI
• Opened 2005
• Purpose built, secure, world class
data centre
• Houses wide variety of leading-edge
systems
• Major expansion in 2013
• 8 MW power upgrade
• 550m2 machine room + 850m2 plant room
• New £20m expansion started
• Further machine room and another 24MW
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Advanced Computing Facility
HPC and Big Data
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New 24MW
substation
WCDI room
Existing ACF data centre

14. Final comments on Data Driven Innovation
• DDI programme is a 15 year commitment
• Building first infrastructure over the next 12 months
• Aim to create an unparalleled array of data
resources
• A safe and secure environment to develop the use
of data innovation in your business
• We want to “upskill” as much of the region’s
population as possible
• We want to make it easy to embed DDI in
businesses across the region
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