£30m boost for super-computing

CHANCELLOR George Osborne has announced grants of £30m for the development of super-computing technology at the Hartree Centre in Daresbury, Cheshire.

Visiting the Cheshire facility the Chancellor said a grant of £19m will go towards developing new technology to make super computers more efficient and improve battery life of devices like laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

A second grant of £11m will fund essential advanced computing capability for the world’s largest radio telescope, allowing groundbreaking research into the origins of the universe.

The Hartree Centre, one of the biggest supercomputing centres in the world, is at the Sci-Tech Daresbury enterprise zone, which was known as the Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus until last summer. It is one of two national science and innovation campuses, with the other at Harwell in Oxfordshire.

The Government said development at Daresbury is expected to create 10,000 skilled jobs across several hundred technology companies and unlock over £150m of private sector investment in the area.

Daresbury officially became one of the Government’s Enterprise Zones in April 2012 and has already begun work with IBM, Intel and Unilever.

Mr Osborne said:”Britain is in a global race and we are in a position to lead the way in science and technology. Projects like the Daresbury development are crucial to boosting the economy and putting the UK at the forefront of the big data revolution.”