Funding boost for HPC is good for UK plc

The government’s decision to make this significant investment in high-performance computing should be applauded (Government to pump £145m into supercomputing). It demonstrates a clear understanding of how developing this kind of technology can help drive future economic growth.
However, the development of HPC is not only about, as George Osborne says, “giving businesses confidence to invest in the UK”, it is also critical to the long-term health of our manufacturing sector and, by extension, the UK economy as a whole.

If manufacturing is to reverse its current downward trend and retain its role as a driver for economic success in the UK, the key will be in driving efficiencies through the product development cycle. IT can play a major part in this and, for many manufacturers, HPC will have a particularly critical role to play.

The primary benefit of HPC is its ability to drive “time to insight” – the length of time taken between the presentation of the problem and reaching an understanding of how to solve it. By streamlining the process, manufacturers can compress the design cycle, add time to the build phase and reduce time to market.

HPC gives manufacturers the opportunity to drive through innovation, understand more complex issues, achieve more accurate and predictable outcomes and make product development faster and more efficient. And, as the government no doubt recognises, all of this should have a positive impact on GDP.

Andrew Carr, Bull