GOVERNMENT

Welsh scientists will be among the first to use a new European supercomputing Grid - one of the world's largest high-performance networks. Dr Chris Greenwell, at the Centre for Applied Marine Sciences (within the School of Ocean Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor) working with colleague, Prof Peter Coveney at University College London, has been awarded 600,000 computing hours (or the same capacity as 16 connected computers running around the clock for four years) on the Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications (DEISA). This network allows scientists to harness the power of the world's most powerful supercomputers for calculations, data storage and visualization from a desktop PC, or even a hand-held computer. Although Dr Chris and Prof Peter have been awarded 600,000 computing hours, they should be able to run their simulations in under three months. The team at Bangor and UCL will use the supercomputing Grid to run computer simulations - thousands of times larger than previously attempted - to predict the behaviour of such things as composite plastic materials for use in car parts, construction, and packaging. This computer simulation technique can predict the strength of the materials before manufacture, preventing the need for costly trials. There is also a demand for research into marine composites, and it is this area which is of particular interest to Bangor's scientists.