Exclusive:'Shocking' decision to axe £800m Edinburgh University supercomputer damages Scotland economy - SNP minister

The “shocking” decision to axe an ambitious £800 million plan to create an exascale supercomputer at Edinburgh University will damage Edinburgh and Scotland’s economy, a senior SNP minister has claimed.

Constitution Secretary Angus Robertson, the SNP Edinburgh Central MSP who represents Edinburgh University, said he had sought a meeting with First Minister John Swinney to discuss the “damaging decision” and press for a U-turn on the decision.

His intervention comes after the Labour government quietly shelved £1.3 billon of funding promised by the Conservatives for tech and artificial intelligence (AI) projects, including £800m for the supercomputer project.

The funding was announced in October last year. The university is said to have already spent £31m building housing for the computer.

Mr Robertson said: “[It’s] terrible news that UK Labour is cutting a project for Edinburgh worth nearly £1 billion. It is absolutely shocking, short-sighted and damaging to Edinburgh and Scotland’s economy, education and tech sector.

“Edinburgh University has built a world-class reputation and was set to drive forward plans for Edinburgh and the Lothians to become Europe’s leading data capital and a centre for research, development and innovation.

“I will be seeking the earliest possible meeting with First Minister John Swinney and Cabinet Secretary for Economy Kate Forbes to discuss this damaging decision for Edinburgh by the new UK Labour government and seek the earliest possible U-turn”.

SNP minister and Constitution Secretary Angus Robertson | Getty Images

The machine would have been 50 times faster than any of the existing computers in the UK, and was considered to be a priority project by the previous government.

Mr Robertson questioned Labour’s new Scottish MPs for failing to speak out on the issue.

He said: “Labour’s new MPs in Edinburgh have had nothing pro-active to say about their governments damaging plans and their MSP and councillor colleagues have been similarly silent. Edinburgh deserves better”.

Exascale computing is seen as a significant achievement in computer engineering, with the potential to revolutionise weather forecasting, climate modelling and personalised medicine. Exascale also reaches the estimated processing power of the human brain at the neural level, able to perform one billion billion calculations each second.

In a statement last week, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) claimed the funding had been promised by the previous administration, but was never allocated in its budget.

A UK government spokesperson said: “We are absolutely committed to building technology infrastructure that delivers growth and opportunity for people across the UK.

“The UK government is taking difficult and necessary spending decisions across all departments in the face of billions of pounds of unfunded commitments. This is essential to restore economic stability and deliver our national mission for growth.

“We have launched the AI Opportunities Action Plan, which will identify how we can bolster our compute infrastructure to better suit our needs and consider how AI and other emerging technologies can best support our new Industrial Strategy.”

A university spokesperson said: “The University of Edinburgh has led the way in supercomputing within the UK for decades, and is ready to work with the government to support the next phase of this technology in the UK, in order to unlock its benefits for industry, public services and society. 

“Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, principal of the university, has now met with the Secretary of State for science, innovation and technology and the Secretary of State for Scotland and we welcome the continued dialogue on this vital issue.”

The university’s Advanced Research Computing High-End Resource (ARCHER) supercomputer was a critical tool in the fight against Covid, having been used during the pandemic to run computer simulations that helped design vaccines and medicines.

In an interview published in May, Mark Parsons, professor of high-performance computing at Edinburgh University, said of the now axed project’s capabilities: “If all seven billion humans in the world were to complete one sum per second, 12 hours a day, it would take nine years to complete the same number of calculations an exascale computer does each second. I find that amazing.”

He added: “The US and China already have Exascale computers, Germany is fast developing its capabilities, and within a few years, all major economies will have one.”