Dr James Knight and Prof Thomas Nowotny
Dr James Knight and Prof Thomas Nowotny University of Sussex academics have established a method of turbocharging desktop PCs to give them the same capability as supercomputers worth tens of millions of pounds. Dr James Knight and Prof Thomas Nowotny from the University of Sussex's School of Engineering and Informatics used the latest Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) to give a single desktop PC the capacity to simulate brain models of almost unlimited size. The researchers believe the innovation, detailed in Nature Computational Science , will make it possible for many more researchers around the world to carry out research on large-scale brain simulation, including the investigation of neurological disorders. Currently, the cost of supercomputers is so prohibitive they are only affordable to very large institutions and government agencies and so are not accessible for large numbers of researchers. As well as shaving tens of millions of pounds off the costs of a supercomputer, the simulations run on the desktop PC require approximately 10 times less energy bringing a significant sustainability benefit too. Dr Knight, Research Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Sussex, said: "I think the main benefit of our research is one of accessibility. Outside of these very large organisations, academics typically have to apply to get even limited time on a supercomputer for a particular scientific purpose.
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