Case study: HECToR

Pinsent Masons facilitates new £113 million uk supercomputer project

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has been advised by Pinsent Masons on its £113 million project to procure HECToR, the UK’s new supercomputer. 

HECToR (High End Computing Terascale Resources) will be one of the most powerful computing systems in the world, boasting a maximum capacity of 250 Teraflops/s.  It will provide UK scientists and academics with the means to undertake increasingly complex computational simulations across a range of scientific disciplines including climatology, earth sciences, chemistry, atomic and molecular physics and nanoscience. 

Under the multi-year project funded by the Office of Science and Innovation, UoE HPCX will provide accommodation, facilities and operational services for HECToR, Cray will provide hardware, maintenance and professional services and NAG will provide computational science and engineering support.

Preliminary work will begin April 2007 and it will start with a capacity of 60 Teraflops/s, increasing to 250 Teraflops/s by 2009, (a capacity which would place it second in the world on the current listing of the world's most powerful supercomputers).

Pinsent Masons’ Leeds office handled all contract negotiations, led by Michael Peeters and Louise Fullwood and supported by Kiran Chand. 

This announcement follows Pinsent Masons' recent appointment to the panel to provide legal services to all of the UK Research Councils

Louise Fullwood of Pinsent Masons commented, “This is a very exciting project, and one which will make significant impact for UK scientists and academics.  Our role was to handle three contracts in parallel, and ensure that the project remained competitive, flexible and scalable.”