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’s forthcoming compute strategy, according to people briefed on the discussions. Labour cut a previous £800mn 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’s ambitions in those sectors.The prime minister’s plan to increase the country’s compute capacity 20-fold by 2030, announced this week, has renewed attention on the axed “exascale” project in the Scottish capital. Exascale supercomputing is defined as the ability to produce a billion billion operations a second.“Officials are still keen for a supercomputer project to go ahead at Edinburgh,” said one person briefed on internal discussions. Another 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 £30mn, could be repurposed into a new supercomputer project, the official said, adding that the “kit is already there”.Labour’s secretary of state for Scotland, Ian Murray, on Wednesday, told the Scottish parliament that Edinburgh’s supercomputer had never been “cancelled” and was instead being “reassessed’.“We’ve been very clear with the University of Edinburgh that the project wasn’t cancelled . . . but it was being reassessed and would go into the spending review process which has kicked off and will conclude by the summer,” said the MP for Edinburgh South. Labour in June will reveal its detailed spending plans for the coming years.“I’m hopeful we will get there as we approach the spending review . . . I’m hopeful that the investment that’s been made will not be wasted,” 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 “brand new supercomputer”.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 “into the spring I will announce further strategy on compute”. “I want to make sure that we have the right resilient, sustainable investment that our country needs when it comes to public compute,” he added. A person close to Kyle said the government’s position on the axed Edinburgh exascale project “has not changed”.The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology said that “while 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”.“As 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.”
