Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.UK government officials have discussed funding a supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh, just six months after axing a similar major computing project at the institution. Officials have considered putting a new state-owned supercomputer at the university as part of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s forthcoming compute strategy, according to people briefed on the discussions. Labour cut a previous \u00a3800mn supercomputer at Edinburgh university after taking power in July, claiming the Conservatives had failed to allocate money for it while in office.The move in August sparked a strong backlash from the tech and scientific community, which argued it would dent Britain\u2019s ambitions in those sectors.The prime minister\u2019s plan to increase the country\u2019s compute capacity 20-fold by 2030, announced this week, has renewed attention on the axed \u201cexascale\u201d project in the Scottish capital.\u00a0Exascale supercomputing is defined as the ability to produce a billion billion operations a second.\u201cOfficials are still keen for a supercomputer project to go ahead at Edinburgh,\u201d said one person briefed on internal discussions.\u00a0Another official said the government had been looking at ways to reverse the decision to pull the plug on the supercomputer.The existing facility, on which the university had already spent \u00a330mn, could be repurposed into a new supercomputer project, the official said, adding that the \u201ckit is already there\u201d.Labour\u2019s secretary of state for Scotland, Ian Murray, on Wednesday, told the Scottish parliament that Edinburgh\u2019s supercomputer had never been \u201ccancelled\u201d and was instead being \u201creassessed\u2019.\u201cWe\u2019ve been very clear with the University of Edinburgh that the project wasn\u2019t cancelled\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009but it was being reassessed and would go into the spending review process which has kicked off and will conclude by the summer,\u201d said the MP for Edinburgh South. Labour in June will reveal its detailed spending plans for the coming years.\u201cI\u2019m hopeful we will get there as we approach the spending review\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009I\u2019m hopeful that the investment that\u2019s been made will not be wasted,\u201d said Murray.Starmer said this week that his administration would seek to increase government-owned compute capacity 20-fold by the end of the decade, and start work imminently on a \u201cbrand new supercomputer\u201d.He did not disclose where that supercomputer would be or how much the government would invest in the project.The government said on Monday it would set out a 10-year compute road map in the spring, which will contain commitments on future investments in national computing infrastructure.Exascale supercomputers are widely seen as crucial to developing artificial intelligence in Britain, as well as the performance of ever more advanced scientific modelling.The US already has three fully functioning exascale computers, while China is understood to have two in operation, with a third under development. Japan, the EU and France are in the process of building their first exascale computers, which are expected to be online in the next few years.The UK in November dropped out of the ranking of locations of the 50 most powerful computers in the world, according to a respected index called the Top500.In response to a question on whether an exascale computer in Edinburgh would be brought forward in the next six months, UK science secretary Peter Kyle said on Monday that \u201cinto the spring I will announce further strategy on compute\u201d.\u00a0\u201cI want to make sure that we have the right resilient, sustainable investment that our country needs when it comes to public compute,\u201d he added.\u00a0A person close to Kyle said the government\u2019s position on the axed Edinburgh exascale project \u201chas not changed\u201d.The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology said that \u201cwhile the action plan focused specifically on AI, we have also committed to developing a long-term compute plan that considers the full spectrum of scientific needs, including exascale computing\u201d.\u201cAs set out previously, the compute programmes announced under the previous government had not been fully funded and that is why projects were not taken forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Artificial intelligence myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.UK government officials have discussed funding a supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh, just six months after axing a similar major computing project at the institution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-168698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}