University of Edinburgh

Ranked 20th in the 2011 QS World University Rankings, The University of Edinburgh is one of  the  UK  and  Europe’s  top  research-led universities.  Established  in  1990,  EPCC  is  the University’s High-Performance and Novel Computing Centre. EPCC provides a wide variety of  services  to  academia  and  industry  including: application  design,  development  and  re-engineering;  performance optimisation;  distributed  computing  consultancy  and solutions; facilities access; data integration and data mining consultancy. Its 70 staff, most educated to post-graduate  degree  level,  are  committed to  the  solution  of  real  world  problems.  EPCC currently  manages the  UK’s  national high-performance  computing  service  HECToR,  plus  a number  of  smaller  services  and  more  experimental  systems, notably  including  its  own BonFIRE testbed. The organisation plays a leading role in many large EC projects including BonFIRE, HPC-Europa2, EUDAT and PRACE, and also in the EUTIST-IMV/M, EGEE and DEISA  projects  in  the  past.  EPCC  has  an  international  reputation  in  the area  of  software services  and  architectures.  It  was  the coordinator  of  the  NextGRID  IP,  developing  the Architecture for Next Generation Grids; and of ADMIRE, which delivered powerful, easy-to-use  technology  for  extracting  information  and  knowledge from  all  kinds  of  data-intensive environments. It also led the data management aspects of the BEinGRID IP, which piloted the use of Grid and Cloud technologies for industry. EPCC is currently the Scientific Co-ordinator of the BonFIRE project, which designs and runs the multi-cloud testbed that ECO2Clouds will use.