Investment Secured to Refresh the Redwood Datacentre and ARCCA HPC Service

ARCCA is set to lead the delivery of a refreshed High Performance Computing (HPC) service capability following University Council approval for investment.  This includes the essential refurbishment of the current Redwood datacentre to support the provision of next generation HPC technology.

With requirements refinement already well underway, the £5.5M programme of works will run until the end of 2024 and will result in a significant increase in Cardiff University’s research computing capability. The programme will also enable reductions in carbon footprint to help the University deliver its Environmental Sustainability Strategy and enable further reductions in the future by allowing waste heat to be utilised elsewhere in  the Redwood building.

An essential part of the datacentre refresh work will be the introduction of Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) to support the smaller footprint but higher power-density requirements of next generation HPC systems. The refreshed HPC solution, which will include replacement of much of the current ‘core’ service available to all researchers in the University, will be commissioned in Q4 2024. Researcher-funded extensions will continue to be supported by ARCCA but will not be refreshed as part of this programme.

To help inform the system specification, researcher representatives from each of the colleges are working closely with ARCCA to capture and map future domain specific research computing requirements from the Schools. Should you wish to discuss a current or future research computing requirement with ARCCA directly to inform this process, please contact arcca-help@cardiff.ac.uk