Scottish data center firm DataVita is to host a new supercomputer for the London-based University College London (UCL).

The announcement is part of a wider investment program from the UK Government’s science-funding body, the UK Research and Innovation, to fund four new supercomputers across the UK.

DataVita wins UCL supercomputing contract

DataVita this week announced it was set to host Charger, a new high-performance computing system funded by UK Research and Innovation and delivered by a UCL-led consortium.

The HPE/Cray-based Charger system will comprise more than 37,000 CPU cores, though more details haven’t been provided in the announcement. Set to be hosted at the company’s main Lanarkshire campus, Charger is expected to be fully available to researchers later in 2026.

Dr. Owain Kenway from UCL Advanced Research Computing said: “Charger boosts the UK’s capability to do real computational research across a wide variety of fields (including but not limited to the physical sciences, biosciences, social sciences and humanities) and puts compute power in the hands of researchers who might otherwise be denied access to larger resources because of the way their problems are structured (many small tasks rather than one large one).

In a LinkedIn post, Kenway said the system will include Intel Xeon Platinum cores, and a “small number of Nvidia Blackwell RTX 6000 Pro server edition GPUs in the cloud. The system will use direct liquid cooling.

DataVita said locating in Scotland, rather than in London, is expected to deliver a carbon saving of around 465 tonnes of CO2e per year due to Scotland’s greater use of renewable energy and the facility’s ability to use free-cooling year-round.

Danny Quinn, managing director of DataVita, added: “We want to thank UCL for choosing to partner with DataVita. By combining the research excellence and innovation leadership of leading London institutions with the environmental and cost advantages of hosting in Scotland, this approach brings together world-class compute capability with measurable sustainability benefits.”

UKRI invests in four UK supercomputers

The Charger announcement follows a £19.5 million ($26.2m), five-year award to expand the UK’s national research computing capability, with the new system one of four newly funded National Compute Resources designed to provide the computational capability required to process large datasets and run complex simulations.

Richard Gunn, digital research infrastructure programme director at UKRI, said: “This system is designed to be a versatile and reliable resource for a vast array of use cases, from life sciences and humanities to engineering. Our goal is to ensure that the UK’s research community has the digital horsepower required to solve complex challenges and maintain our global edge in innovation.”

In total, the UKRI has announced £76m ($102.3m) in investment to launch four new national compute resources (NCRs).

The University of Birmingham has secured £18m ($24.2m) to host the Baskerville National Compute Resource. Full details haven’t been shared, but the liquid-cooled, GPU-centric Lenovo system will launch in 2027.

At the University of Edinburgh, a £19.5m investment will “enhance and expand the reach of Cirrus,” an existing HPE Cray EX4000 system that launched in 2016. The new expansion will focus on CPUs and be designed to complement the university’s upcoming national supercomputer.

The University of Cambridge is also set to host a GPU-based system, though few details are currently available.