Our facilities
Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Modelling (DAIM) Building
This brand new, £4.5 million facility houses the largest computational teaching space on campus. Spread over two levels, it has hundreds of seats for students to learn, practice, and apply their coding technique to unique problems that face the world related to data science, artificial intelligence and modelling.
The DAIM facility will be used by students studying our MSc Artificial Intelligence and Data Science course, which has been co-designed by an industry panel to enable students to access brand new opportunities in the workforce in these areas.
VIPER - High Performance Computer
Within the university sector, VIPER is one of the leading High Performance Computing centres and one of the highest rated in the North of England. This is a significant research investment that provides a vital requirement to meet the ever growing demands of the University’s research community, and underpins DAIM’s research, education, and external partnership remit. VIPER is being used in a wide variety of cutting edge research across the University. This ranges from studying and simulating the galaxy in which we live, the vibrational effects of molecules, semiconductor effects, through to computational linguistics.
VIPER Technical Specifications
• Linux OS with approximately 5500 nodes
• 180 compute nodes, each with 2x 14-core Broadwell E5-2680v4 processors (2.4 –3.3 GHz), 128 GB DDR4 RAM
• 4 high memory nodes, each with 4x 10-core Haswell E5-4620v3 processors (2.0 GHz), 1TB DDR4 RAM
• 4 GPU nodes, each identical to compute nodes with the addition of 4x Nvidia Tesla K40m GPUs per node
• 2 visualisation nodes with 2x Nvidia GTX 980TI
• Intel Omni-Path interconnect (100 Gb/s node-switch and switchswitch)
• 500 TB parallel file system (BeeGFS)
“VIPER has truly enabled us to look beyond standard computational approaches and deploy techniques on a scale that we never anticipated before. The capabilities of VIPER’s specialised hardware, for example, allows us to significantly cut model training times and work on huge datasets in unprecedented ways. This means our research sees shorter lead times from model development to results – in terms of being competitive on a world stage, this is absolutely crucial.”
- Dr. David Benoit Senior Lecturer in Computational Astrochemistry
Investing in Academic Facilities
The University of Hull is the 14th oldest in England and achieved Sanctuary Status in June 2018. Such outcomes do not arise by chance. We are committed to improving the lives of the students that we teach and forging a bright future for them. Our students are highly employable, with more than 94% in work or further study within 15 months of graduating.* All our Computer Science students have the option of a guaranteed paid placement option as part of their degree. We strongly believe in inclusive access to higher education, and we endeavour to continue reducing barriers and supporting people seeking sanctuary in realising their academic potential, as well as fostering a culture of welcome, diversity and support among staff, students and the wider community. Over the past decade we have invested over £330M in delivering a step-change in academic provision. This includes:
• £27M transforming the University Library
• £27M enhancing ICT services
• £130M creating a 1500 bedroom on campus accommodation
• £16M for international standard sport facilities
• £9.5M for a world-class concert hall
*Percentage of students in work or further study within 15 months of graduating: UK domicile full-time first degree leavers, Graduate Outcomes survey for the academic year 2018/19, published by HESA July 2021.