Bristol University drives R&D with £7m supercomputer

The University of Bristol has opened a £7m supercomputer facility to support research in areas such as climate change, drug design and aerospace engineering.

BlueCrystal is one of the fastest and largest computers of its kind in the UK, and can carry out more than 37 trillion calculations a second.

The system is a result of the university's collaboration with various companies, including ClusterVision, IBM and ClearSpeed.

Ian Stewart, director of the university's Advanced Computing Research Centre, said, "Serious research in many disciplines can no longer be undertaken without high-performance computing [HPC] and the university has recognised this through its investment in BlueCrystal.

"HPC-based research contributes significantly to university research income and will play an increasingly important role in teaching."

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