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Work has started on the new national supercomputer at a site near Penicuik in Midlothian. The £750 million system, hosted by the University of Edinburgh and owned by UK Research and Innovation, is scheduled to be ready for use in spring 2028.
news.sky.comConstruction work has begun on the UK’s new national supercomputer at a site near Penicuik in Midlothian. The £750 million machine will be hosted by the University of Edinburgh and owned by UK Research and Innovation. The system is designed to deliver at least one billion-billion calculations per second, roughly 50 times the power of the current Archer2 supercomputer at the same location.
It will contain thousands of the latest processors and occupy a building the size of a supermarket. Robertson Construction Central East is carrying out the building work. Construction is scheduled to finish by the end of 2027, with the supercomputer ready for use around spring 2028.
Archer2 will be decommissioned at the end of this year. The new machine will operate on the same scale as Germany’s JUPITER system completed last year. Surplus heat from the supercomputer will be used to warm university buildings.
Its location in Scotland, where air is often cooler, is intended to aid natural cooling. The project was originally backed by the previous Conservative government but was shelved in August 2024 after Labour took power. Funding was reinstated in June 2025.
UK AI minister Kanishka Narayan said the start of construction marks a decisive step in delivering the compute roadmap and ensures researchers and businesses have cutting-edge power in the UK. Garth Wells, deputy executive chairman of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council at UKRI, said the £750 million investment provides industrial-scale tools to solve complex challenges and supports economic growth.
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