Bull charges down Scouse supercomputing deal

VAR bags £800,000 win with University of Liverpool

Bull Information Systems has inked a high-performance computing (HPC) deal with the University of Liverpool, valued at about £800,000.

The five-year support deal will see the VAR implement an integrated 40-teraflop HPC system for the university, based around its bullx blade hardware and supercomputer software suite.

According to IDC, the global HPC market is set to grow from $11bn (£6.8bn) to $14bn between 2012 and 2016, as countries increase their investment in supercomputing in the name of scientific advance and economic competitiveness.

Andrew Carr, chief executive of Bull UK & Ireland, agreed that the world's leading economies are cottoning on to the competitive edge HPC can bring.

"European governments, businesses, centres of research and academia such as the University of Liverpool are increasingly catching up with their counterparts in the US in this respect," he said. "Bull is proud to be in the vanguard of this new focus on HPC excellence."

The company said it won the project based on the breadth of its HPC manpower – it claims to have 600 HPC professionals across Europe – and its independent approach.

Cliff Addison, manager of advanced research computing at the University of Liverpool, said: "Bull was attractive to us because it could provide us not only with high-quality HPC solutions but – critically – also access to extensive expertise and new thinking in HPC, ongoing guidance in implementing and running the solutions and the ability to test out the latest technologies at its industry-leading benchmarking facility."

According to IDC, the HPC market grew by 40.3 per cent year on year in the third quarter of 2012 to a record high of $3.3bn, with IBM and HP commanding more than half of the market between them.