Sir Keir Starmer pulled the plug on an £800 million University of Edinburgh supercomputer because it made “little strategic sense” a UK government source has said.
The unnamed figure told the Financial Times that the project was too focused on “traditional computing projects such as scientific simulations” rather than artificial intelligence.
Edinburgh’s exascale supercomputer was one of a number of projects quietly ditched by the new Labour at the start of the month.
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The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said despite promises of money from the Tories, no new funding for the programmes had been allocated in the last government’s spending plan.
The University has already spent £31m on a new wing of its advanced computing facility, which was purpose-built to house the supercomputer.
One government official said scrapping the project did not mean the government had gone cold on supercomputers generally.
They told the paper it was "still a huge priority for the government."
“We want any government money to pack a punch. We are not abandoning supercomputing at all," they added.
The aim of the exascale project is to build a computer that can perform one billion calculations each second.
Once operational, it would be able to provide “high-performance computing capability” for key research and industry projects across the UK.
Currently, there are only two known fully functioning exascale computers in the world, both in the US.
There is speculation China has one, though that has not been confirmed.
One senior government figure told the FT that the Edinburgh exascale project made little strategic sense given that it was not focused on AI, but on more traditional computing projects such as scientific simulations.
The person added that they expected the new government to match the previous spending commitments in supercomputing in the forthcoming autumn Budget.
It is not clear, however, if that will mean more money for the Edinburgh project.
Shadow science minister Andrew Griffith told the FT it was a “misrepresentation” from Labour that the project was “unfunded.”
The Tory said it was always the case that investment would be accounted for in the 2024 autumn Budget.
“It’s a huge setback for UK tech and . . . it seems a sign of the lowering of ambition when it comes to Britain’s plans to become a science and technology superpower,” he added.
The University of Edinburgh has been approached for comment.
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