Birmingham Environment forAcademic Research : Case studies volume 2

The work within this case study was brought together to publicise the different types of work that was done on the University’s high performance computer called BlueBEAR2 and on the many systems that help researchers. This computer system is part of the University of Birmingham’s environment for academic research (BEAR), which helps staff and students of the University delve deeper into their research than has been done before. Traditional research has always been to experiment or theorise, BlueBEAR is used to deliver a third option, computer based modeling. Computer based modeling is used to underpin the physical and theoretical research. Sometimes computer based modeling is the only way (e.g. colliding galaxies, nuclear explosions), where safety and cost is prohibitive. This is a small set of case studies taken from the vast research that is being done on BlueBEAR2 and generally around the University. BlueBEAR2 is the next generation of hardware from BlueBEAR and includes large memory, GPGPU, database and data mining services.