A High-End Computing Consortium is defined by EPSRC to be a network of computational researchers who are provided with a portion of EPSRC’s HPC resource, which it distributes among its members. Each HEC consortium must be associated with a different research area within EPSRC’s remit and serve as a forum to share knowledge and develop software. 

Each consortium will help bring HEC to a wider community, including non-traditional users and traditional experimentalists, to facilitate world-class research using the UK’s national computing resources. 

The objectives and outcomes of the HEC consortia can be split into the following headings: 

• Community: To serve as a forum to communicate research and HEC expertise within the relevant community. To also help UK growth in this area of research by synthesising and disseminating good practice from the global user community. 

• Software development: To develop, port, optimise and benchmark software that will enable new research areas to be tackled and will prepare the UK’s user communities to benefit from future high end computing architectures. To expand the breadth of the work of the community that the consortium would support. Focusing on cutting-edge applications, and building collaborations with experiments and industry, to achieve maximum impact from EPSRC’s investment in the ARCHER2 and tier-2 services. To develop tools to assist large-scale simulation. For example, for tools to allow interoperability between different software packages, and the exchange of data and metadata and contribute to the development of data standards and develop tools to facilitate analysis of the large volumes of data produced by simulations at large length and timescales. 

• Core support: To provide a central core of support needed to accommodate a critical mass of activity within the community considering the big challenges posed by and to the community or to create and maintain information on best practice for high end computing modelling and simulation, including code-specific guidance for the community. 

• Management and governance: To have a clear management and governance structure for the allocation and application procedures of the consortium. This must include transparent policies for allocation panel membership and open application routes for members and non-members of the consortium. Decisions should follow a peer-reviewed process that embodies EPSRC principles and standards. To have a flexible plan for resource utilisation over the consortium’s lifespan, aimed at maximising the consortium’s ARCHER2 and tier-2 allocation, including any changes to that allocation.