Cardiff University HPC-Enabled Scientific Achievement Award

For over a decade, ARCCA has been a key part of the collaboration between Cardiff University researchers and the gravitational waves LIGO Scientific Collaboration whose primary objective has been to discern authentic signals from mere artifacts present in the collected data.

The recent activation of new LIGO detectors marked a major milestone, enabling the capture of ~30 significant events within the initial three months of operation. This success underscored the heightened sensitivity of the detectors and the intricate analyses conducted on the gathered data.

Underpinning this achievement lies a purpose-built LIGO extension to Cardiff’s Hawk supercomputer, carefully designed and implemented in time to analyse the latest LIGO consortium data. This cutting-edge system owes much to the collaborative co-design of both hardware and software architecture, featuring the collective expertise of Cardiff researchers from the School of Physics & Astronomy, ARCCA, and partners Lenovo and Logicalis.

Our recent success received in the HPCwire 2023 Readers’ & Editors’ Choice Awards for “Top HPC Enabled Scientific Achievement” announced at the annual SC23 conference in Denver serves as international recognition of the collective effort and expertise of ARCCA and LIGO who ensured the seamless integration and optimal performance of the system.

With a programme of work underway to deliver a refreshed Redwood datacentre and HPC system in 2024, ARCCA continues its support of Cardiff’s research computing community. This award reaffirms our commitment to this support through technology leadership, enabling scientific discovery and innovation in collaboration with our partners.

Further information can be found on the HPCwire and Lenovo websites.