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DiRAC is the integrated supercomputing facility for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology, areas in which the UK is world-leading. It was funded as a result of investment of £12.32 milllion, from the Government's Large Facilities Capital Fund, together with investment from STFC and from universities. In 2012, the DiRAC facility was upgraded with a further £15 million capital investment from government (DiRAC II).

HPC-based modeling remains an essential tool for the exploitation of observational and experimental facilities in astronomy and particle physics. The investment in new hardware has provided UK particle physicists and astronomers with upgraded HPC technology to address some of the most challenging scientific problems and to test theories and run simulations from the data gathered in experiments. 

• using supercomputers to enable scientists to calculate what theories of the early universe predict and to test them against observations of the present universe;
  
  
• undertaking lattice field theory calculations whose primary aim is to increase the predictive power of the Standard Model of elementary particle interactions through numerical simulation of Quantum Chromodynamics;
  
  
• carrying out state-of-the-art cosmological simulations, including the large-scale distribution of dark matter, the formation of dark matter haloes, the formation and evolution of galaxies and clusters, the physics of the intergalactic medium and the properties of the intracluster gas.

DiRAC is both an academic-led and academic supervised Facility with an active Project Management Board and Technical Working Group that ensures that the science goals of the community are solved by the most appropriate technical and algorithmic solution. DiRAC is managed as a single Facility with the DiRAC II funding providing five installations (see below) and the DiRAC I funding awarded to 8 consortia. In both funding tranches the machines are based around the solution of a particular set of problems and architectural needs:

DiRAC II

There are five installations:

Cambridge HPCS Service: Data Analytic Cluster - 10000 cores, 1PB Parallel File Store, High Performance IO and Interconnect, Non Blocking Switch Architecture, 4GB RAM Per core. Further information can be obtained by emailing support

Cambridge COSMOS SHARED MEMORY Service (link opens in a new window)- 1856 cores, 14.8TB Globally shared memory (8GB RAM per core), 146TB High Performance scratch storage (~5GB/sec sequential r/w), Intel Xeon Phi Co-processors Capability (coming in Q4'2012). Further information can be obtained by emailing cosmos help

Leicester IT Services: Complexity Cluster (link opens in a new window)- 4352 cores, 0.8PB Parallel File Store, High Performance IO and Interconnect, Non Blocking Switch Architecture, 8GB RAM Per core. Further information can be obtained by emailing leicester support

Durham ICC Service (link opens in a new window): Data Centric Cluster - 6500 cores, 2PB Parallel File Store, High Performance IO and Interconnect, 2:1 Blocking Switch Architecture, 8GB RAM Per core. Further information can be obtained by emailing cosma support

Edinburgh 6144 node BlueGene/Q (link opens in a new window) - 65000 cores, 5D Torus Interconnect, High Performance IO and Interconnect. Further information can be obtained by emailing dirac support

For general enquiries about DiRAC II, please e-mail dirac support.

DiRAC I

• STFC supported work leads to IBM's 'world's greenest supercomputer'

For other highlights, please see individual consortia members websites.

• The DiRAC e-Infrastructure Service for Industry and Public Sector
• DiRAC website