A £2M Silicon Graphics Origin2000 supercomputer has been installed at Cambridge University for use by the UK Computational Cosmology Consortium (UK-CCC). This machine will be an invaluable tool for testing competing models of the origin and development of the universe since its creation in the Big Bang, which took place some 10 billion years ago.
The COSMOS supercomputer boasts 32 high performance R10000 processors and a staggering 8 Gbytes of main memory and is the UK's largest machine of its type. Its use by the UK-CCC was instigated by Professor Stephen Hawking during a visit to the Silicon Graphics headquarters in Mountain View, California. Says Hawking: "The COSMOS computer will enable us to calculate what our theories of the early universe predict and test them against the new observational results that are now coming in".
For more information about the COSMOS project, and the UK-CCC, please see the COSMOS web site at:
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/cosmos
For more information about Silicon Graphics , please see the Silicon Graphics web site at:
http://www-europe.sgi.com/International/UK
[This item based around joint COSMOS press release 7 April 1997]