UK Research and Innovation has invested £5.7m (US$7.15m) in a compute cluster that will reportedly triple the processing power for analyzing atmospheric science data. The cluster will be available for scientists to use by the summer of 2024.
Known as LOTUS, the expanded parallel compute cluster will enable a much greater volume of computing tasks and multiple streams of data analysis to be done at the same time. LOTUS is part of JASMIN, a data-intensive supercomputer used by researchers at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science with support from the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis.
Tripling the current capacity to around 55,000 compute cores means that LOTUS users – of which there are currently 1,500 – will experience better performance and reduced task queuing time.
Scientists will be able to use the renewed LOTUS cluster to analyze climate change, air pollution and weather data – as well as other environmental science topics and issues such as oceanography, wildlife populations and earthquake damage.
UK Research and Innovation’s investment was commissioned by the Natural Environment Research Council and delivered by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.
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