Professor O'Reilly stated: "This new facility simply makes it possible to address problems that previously we could only think about, but could not realistically tackle." The HPC, one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, was officially unveiled at the University on June 1.

The facility will allow researchers to perform calculations 100 times faster than is currently possible and could allow them to complete a year's work in a single day. The HPC will also allow University experts to run hundreds of analyses simultaneously, vastly increasing the speed and efficiency of world-class research carried out in Nottingham.

Sir Colin Campbell stated: "This facility will be of national significance. Congratulations to everyone who has worked so hard on it." Provided by leading technology companies Sun Microsystems Inc., AMD and Streamline Computing Ltd, in a joint venture with the university, it represents a total investment of £5 million over the next three years.

Guests from all three companies joined University of Nottingham researchers from the Schools of Pharmacy, Civil Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics & Astronomy to mark the launch of the HPC. Professor O'Reilly and other visitors were given a guided tour of the supercomputer room, in the Cripps Computing Centre.

The supercomputer weighs 13 tonnes - equivalent to about eight family cars - and occupies 650 cubic feet of space. It can perform three million million calculations every second and has 50 Terabytes of disk space. If it was an MP3 player it could hold enough music to play continuously, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for the next 5700 years.

Professor Don Grierson, pro-vice chancellor for research, stated: "Our strategic investment in high performance computing underpins our world-changing research in science, engineering, and medicine."

The University of Nottingham's HPC facility is the second largest academic facility in Europe and the eighth largest of its kind in the world. It was funded as part of a successful bid to the government's Science Research Investment Fund (SRIF), and has as much computing power as several thousand standard desktop PCs.

The HPC facility has been made available to more than 20 schools and departments across the university, with academics in each school able to access the central grid directly through their desktop PCs via a 'clone' system.

Dr Frazer Pearce, in the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy, is the HPC project leader and will be using it himself to model the evolution of the Universe. He said: “The new facility will allow us to attempt grand challenge computational projects, reinforcing Nottingham’s reputation for producing world-changing research.

“Modern research relies heavily on computers. World class research often requires a world class high performance computing facility, something to which researchers at the University of Nottingham now have on-demand access.”

University of Nottingham researchers in the Schools of Pharmacy, Civil Engineering, Physics & Astronomy and Chemistry are undertaking four pilot projects using the HPC facility. These projects cross academic boundaries and provide a snapshot of the depth and range of research that can be explored:

• Protein folding and dynamics — the HPC allows, for the first time, a simulation of the whole process by which proteins ’unfold’. The failure of this process is implicated in many diseases, and a better understanding could lead to advances in the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

• Modelling turbulence — simulations of how strong winds affect suspension bridges will be the most detailed ever to have taken place. They could provide answers to one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics — understanding turbulence and representing it in computer models.

• The Hot Universe — a project involving the largest simulation of its kind ever attempted: a two billion particle model of the evolving Universe. This work will provide models of how the Universe might have developed since the Big Bang around 13 million years ago.

• Solving solvation — the HPC facility could hold the key to harnessing the potential of supercritical fluids, which have some liquid-like properties and some gas-like properties. Groundbreaking studies could see supercritical fluids offering a much more environmentally friendly alternative solvent for the global chemical industry.

Commercial companies collaborating with the University can also use the HPC’s computing power to help them realise their research ambitions.