Impact evaluation of a high-performance computing facility

EPSRC commissioned this report to provide an independent, evidence-based evaluation of the impact HECToR delivered for UK science, the economy and society. The report evaluates the impact of HECToR, the UK’s high end computing resource from 2007 to 2014 and was published in December 2014.

High performance computing is a crucial part of the UK’s scientific infrastructure, underpinning its position as a leading research nation. Costing £118m over the course of its life, HECToR went live in October 2007 and was then Britain’s fastest supercomputer. HECToR was funded by three UK Research Councils, and run under a partnership arrangement between the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, higher education and industry. HECToR – or High-End Computing Terascale Resource to give it its full title – boasted a memory that could store 1,000 million million million million bytes of data.

The methodology for this work included reviews of existing evidence, surveys of users, bibliometric analysis and expert interviews and case studies. Impacts included:
• HECToR was used by 2,500 researchers across the length and breadth of the UK. A total of 272 organisations across academia, government and industry were able to harness its power.
• Analysis uncovered more than 60 innovations that had been supported by HECToR, a high proportion of which were considered to be ‘major discoveries and pioneering breakthroughs’.
• HECToR enabled >800 publications, which were twice as likely as the UK average to be in the top 5% of papers in their field

Recommendations included:
• Strengthening links with industry
• Securing the service’s status as a strategic asset
• Enhancing evaluation and monitoring