Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Printable version | E-mail this to a friend |
£145 million investment in e-infrastructure
Today a £145 million boost to improve Britain’s e-infrastructure was announced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
This will drive growth and innovation across a range of sectors
that rely heavily on computing including manufacturing,
engineering and design. It will also provide industry with the
latest technology and facilities, giving reassurance that Britain
is a great place to do business and encouraging further private
sector support.
Universities and Science Minister David Willetts said:
"Significantly improving computing infrastructure is
vital to driving growth and giving businesses the confidence to
invest in the UK. It has the potential to significantly improve
the design and manufacturing process, encouraging innovation
across a whole range of sectors.
"The investment will also be of enormous benefit to
our world-class research base. It will enable universities to
carry out highly sophisticated research and archive more data,
keeping us at the very leading edge of science."
Intel Director for Public Sector Tristan Wilkinson said:
"Intel has long believed that you need to invest
your way out of a recession and this announcement reflects our
philosophy. We naturally welcome the Government’s announcement to
make a significant investment in high-performance computing, a
technology that is at the leading edge of computing, innovation,
and growth. This signals a clear commitment to a future that
embraces science, research and technology, and provides confidence
for industry to invest in Britain."
IBM UK and Ireland Chief Executive Stephen Leonard said:
"Today's announcement of a government
e-infrastructure investment provides valuable stimulus that has
impact far wider than the technology sector. This aligns closely
with IBM's Smarter Planet agenda. We believe that
technology infrastructure investment will stimulate a smarter
approach to addressing challenges such as city infrastructure,
public safety, transport and energy while also providing broader
economic, environmental and societal benefit."
The following areas will benefit from the investment:
Software development
Computer power
Data storage
Wide bandwidth networks
Cyber security and authentication
People and skills
This builds on investment announced in the Budget for
supercomputing facilities at Daresbury Science and Innovation
Campus in Cheshire, putting it at the forefront of software
research and development.
This draws on work being done Professor Dominic Tildesley
from Unilever to identify priority areas for future investment in
the UK’s computing infrastructure.
Notes to editors
1. The Government has today, in addition to the ring-fenced
science budget, 'earmarked' capital funding of
£145m for High Performance Computing and e-infrastructure subject
to approval of the full business case being developed by the
Research Councils.
2. Additional resource cost will be determined during the
development of the business case.
3. HPC is the use of powerful processors, networks and
parallel supercomputers to tackle problems that are very computer
or data-intensive. The same HPC techniques can be used to program
the largest supercomputers containing hundreds of thousands of
processors, or to exploit the full potential of a multi-core laptop.
4. The Daresbury Campus in Cheshire is one of the two
national science and innovation campuses, the other being at
Harwell in Oxfordshire. Daresbury is home to the UK’s largest
multidisciplinary Computer Science and Engineering group.
5. BIS's online newsroom contains the latest press
notices, speeches, as well as video and images for download. It
also features an up to date list of BIS press office contacts. See
http://www.bis.gov.uk/newsroom for more information.
Contacts:
BIS Press Office
NDS.BIS@coi.gsi.gov.uk
Sally Catmull
Phone: 020 7215 6577
sally.catmull@bis.gsi.gov.uk