DiRAC-3 Operations 2019-2022 - Cambridge [2020-06 resubmission]

This grant keeps a supercomputer facility running for three years, replacing an earlier award that had already passed peer review. The DiRAC-3 facility at Cambridge provides computing power for UK researchers working across physics, astronomy, and cosmology. Without sustained operational funding, these machines cannot run, and the research programmes that depend on them would stall. The abstract states this is an administrative resubmission—the science case was already judged sound. If the facility operates as planned, researchers will continue to run simulations of galaxy formation, black hole mergers, particle collisions, and other phenomena that require massive computation. These simulations test fundamental theories of the universe against observational data. The work is curiosity-driven fundamental science with no immediate practical application. Past investments in similar high-performance computing have, however, enabled breakthroughs in everything from weather forecasting to materials design—applications that emerged years after the original fundamental research.