Scotland will be home to the UK’s most powerful supercomputer to unlock a decade of national renewal through artificial intelligence, the government has revealed.
The Chancellor has now confirmed up to a further £750m to build the UK’s new national supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh.
Edinburgh’s new supercomputer will give scientists from across the UK the compute power they need for cutting edge research and making the next big breakthrough – whether that is personalised medical treatments, making air travel more sustainable, or modelling climate change.
The supercomputer will work alongside the AI research resource, a network of the UK’s most powerful supercomputers that were built to bolster scientific research.
UKTN first reported back in 2023 that Edinburgh was poised to home a new exascale supercomputer that could turbocharge advances in AI, medicine and low-carbon energy.
This will form part of the Chancellor’s commitment to investing in Britain’s renewal at the upcoming Spending Review and follows Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s unveiling of £1bn extra funding to scale up the country’s AI compute power twenty-fold on the opening day of London Tech Week.
“From the shipyards of the Clyde to developments in steam engine technology, Scottish trailblazers were central to the industrial revolution – so the next great industrial leap through AI and technology should be no different,” Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology Peter Kyle said.
“Basing the UK’s most powerful supercomputer in Edinburgh, Scotland will now be a major player in driving forward the next breakthroughs that put our Plan for Change into action.”
Secretary of State for Scotland Ian Murray, added: “This is a landmark moment and will place Scotland at the forefront of the UK’s technological revolution.
“The £750m investment in Edinburgh’s new supercomputer places Scotland at the cutting edge of computing power globally.”
The new supercomputer will vastly exceed the capacity of the UK’s current national supercomputer, ARCHER2.
The government will set out more details about the system in the upcoming Compute Roadmap, which is set to be published this summer.
Read more: Labour shelves £1.3bn Tory-pledged AI compute projects
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