Fujitsu Ltd and London University’s Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine have teamed to collaborate on research into parallel computing applications. The work will form the basis for a new Centre for Parallel Computing in the College’s Department of Computing, which will be headed by Professor John Darlington. Fujitsu is lending Imperial College a 128-processor model of its AP1000 Sparc-based multiple instruction-multiple data parallel computer model based on up to 1,024 Sparc chips, which is connected to the UK SuperJanet Joint Academic Network and will thus be available for use throughout Europe – and hopes that the collaboration will result in new supercomputer applications. According to the College, many departments will benefit from being able to run applications that are too demanding for their existing machines. Planned projects range from new ways of analysing the Earth’s core through modelling layers of atoms to research into semiconductors. Non-numeric applications such as multimedia and virtual reality will also be high on the agenda – the loan equipment includes a high-definition television set. The College already has links with Japan: the Physics Department, for example, is involved in a UKP3m project with the Japanese government-run Research Development Corporation.
