About ExCALIBUR H&ES

Rationale

• Designed to inform, and be informed by, the ExCALIBUR software projects across the whole remit (UKRI, Met Office and UKAEA)
• Deliver proof of concept systems with future hardware relevant for the Exascale computing needs of the UKRI research community
• Must interact with Public Sector, Industry and Commerce as real partners
• The Exascale definitions we will use are activity based:
  • Solving Problems that are a 10-1000x larger than we solve at present
  • Solving Problems 10-1000x faster than at present
  • Problems can be simulation, data modelling and/or data driven
  • Can come from all areas of Research and Innovation
  • Exascale “Velocity” is just an important output as Exascale “Volume”

Funding

• ExCALIBUR was awarded £4.5M in capital funding over 4.5 years to develop a hardware fore-sighting programme
• Industry co-funding for the programme will be sought where possible
• The £4.5m capital will provide testbed areas that use pre-commercial equipment for software prototyping and development to:
  • enable the software community to be ready to use commercial products effectively as soon as they come on to the market;
  • provide the UKRI community with the ability to influence the technology industry and the necessary knowledge to guide their purchase decisions
• A core activity for H&ES is Benchmarking for Exascale
• H&ES will also be encouraging true Co-design activities

Timeline

Closed calls are available to STFC DiRAC partner institutions and their collaborators only - DiRAC is supporting UKRI to implement the Hardware and Enabling Software programme.

Submissions to the 2021-2022 ExCALIBUR H&ES open call are currently being reviewed.

ExCALIBUR H&ES open call