UK Prime Minister wants £800M to spend on big British iron This week British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled his Science and Technology Framework, and one of the first projects could be a massive supercomputer to rival the US's top ranked Frontier system — assuming he can find the money to pay for it. Citing multiple sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports that the …
So I guess you don't want the government to fund small scales projects and that they should only fund large projects?
NASA hands out similar small scale funding to smaller research projects, are you going to criticise them too?
"The agency provides up to $125,000 for companies to establish the merit and feasibility of their innovations."
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-provides-45m-boost-to-us-small-businesses
And the $45m in funding that NASA gave out is split across 365 projects with a cap of $125k, so NASA seem to think that small scale funding is worth it, and they have been running funding schemes like this for over a decade.
So why do you think this sort of program won't work in the UK?
Also have you considered that the organisations that applied for funding (mainly universities) already have research staff, offices and workstations?
Whilst it's nice to (finally) see some sort of ambition at HMG, and not just a rehash of old ideas, the cynic in me thinks £800m will be spent building a £1m machine, which won't perform as well as anyone elses £1m machine.
We brits might well be *capable* of doing this, but once HMG gets involved, money will be syphoned off to cronies and donors, and the rest will be spent "skilling up" and obtaining hardware. When this project is complete, it'll be brandished a failure and there won't be an attempt at a replacement or upgrade, so whatever learnings we might have made will ultimately be lost, along with any of the long term benefits.
Not sufficiently over budget. I suspect it will be sold as being great value for money, but will overrun and cost over £5bn (https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/04/national_cyber_force_hq_samlesbury/?td=keepreading )
A computer this important and expensive will need to be protected as if it were a military/national security asset, so will need to be housed a dozen or floors underground. Etc.
However, in typical government fudge, it will be operated by Microsoft (uk) as part of G-cloud.
We no longer design CPUs. We used to have a cheap talented labour, but since taxes gone through the roof along with costs of living and inflation, the pay is nowhere near adequate to the effort it takes to become a chip designer. So good luck finding these, as those who could already moved offshore.
We also don't have fabs that could make these chips.
Seems like it's going to be another PPE type of scandal in the making.
Government will get a pile of crapware without anyone knowing how to even get it to boot.
But as always someone will get rich.
I'll have you know crystal reports is an extremely complicated piece of software. You have to line up these little boxes, change the colours to your specification and link them to some data in a spreadsheet. You can link it to a database and do all the grunt work in the software but ain't no one got time for that shit and I'm unsure why anyone would. Why reinvent the wheel? Having said that some of us that used it in the past actually didn't use it other than to create a template then it was VBA all the way. I spent 12 months not actually opening it.
they'll borrow the reconstructed Babbage Difference Engine
Or they'll "think big" and build an Analytical Engine on the grounds that our engineering and material science have advanced enough to make it feasible, and talk about the vast number of jobs that will be created by the revived Jacquard loom card industry.
[And if you haven't seen it: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is great fun.]
"We are confident that we shall break the infamous Ten Gear Mile Barrier before the end of the half decade, despite the naysayers repeated attempts to claim that the dreadful Sprocket Incident last month was due to backlash in the Mark 3 Dual Drive Reversible memory stack: DDR3 is safe and the upcoming DDR4 promises to raise the Continuous Shaft frequency to above 60rpm, thereby removing the need to shore up the Thames Embankment against resonance.
"British Innovation marches on, to the proud sound of our plucky ranks of Grease Boys and WD40 Wallahs singing their shanties to keep in time with the rhythm of the Distributed Pendula Clocks, saving both Our Country and their hands."
If this pointless PR stunt becomes reality, it'll cost £1 for an Amstrad e-mailer from the clearance bin at Pissy World and £799,999,999 for the outsourcing contract to Crapita.
I'm wondering on how that local supercomupter for local people bollocks will work out. The UK has no hiigh-end chip manufacturer or facility - or an IT company with the expertise to build or run a supercomputer.
The UK has no hiigh-end chip manufacturer or facility - or an IT company with the expertise to build or run a supercomputer.
Just scale up this cluster.
"This week British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled his Science and Technology Framework..."
If Sunak really wants to make a difference to British science then he ought perhaps to consider rejoining the Horizon programme and to ensure that the UK becomes an Associated State for science and technology cooperation purposes.
No, it was the arrogant, deceitful one that agreed to treat the Irish sea border like any other external border, and then introduced 5 times as many checks there as any of the other EU borders. Their attempts to make the agreement unworkable are what led to the NI protocol bill, and it was the threat of that bill which brought them back to the negotiating table and the new agreement.
@AC- 5 times as many checks .
You must understand that the "5 times as many", is a lot of rubbish. I could, sort of, understand if you wrote "twice" as many even if that is not true either.
It's like you assume the EU in its despair having lost you have decided to punish you with 5 times as many checks.
The reality is that you are, as so many other countries a third country and you are treated like other third countries like the USA or South Africa.
I cannot remember the name of the Tory MP who came out with that "5 times" rubbish but he compared two EU "countries" , perhaps NI to the Netherlands where NI has this special relation with the EU, like the special relation NI has to Ireland, which the UK has not as May's solution was rejected in Britain.
But personally I find it odd and hard to understand why you can fold for something as ridiculous like 5 times.
The world is not that complicated. The EU was built to get rid of red tape and border controls internally because it makes business more efficient.
But outside is outside, and it goes both ways. Trading with the UK got more complicate for the EU too, and more so if the UK started to control that border traffic, but according to der Mogg it's not worth it, as it's slow and expensive.
Brexit means Brexit, just get over it, the worst is yet to come.
Article 710 of the Trade and Cooperation Agreeement (TCA) "GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR PARTICIPATION IN UNION PROGRAMMES AND ACTIVITIES":
The United Kingdom shall participate in and contribute to the Union programmes, activities, or in exceptional cases, the part of Union programmes or activities, which are open to its participation, and which shall be listed in a Protocol on Programmes and activities in which the United Kingdom participates ("Protocol I").
Note shall participate. Not "might" or "could" or "if it wants', but shall, unequivocal.
The "Protocol I" referred to defines the programmes as: Horizon Europe; the Euratom Research and Training programme; the ITER fusion test facility; and the Copernicus earth monitoring system.
The only condition applied was that the TCA must be ratified by both parties, which has happened. It was signed on 30th December 2020, and entered into force on May 1st, 2021.
The remaining steps were the various committes to decide work, budgets, etc. That is where the EU is dragging its feet, threatening not to work on those until the NI Protocol issue is resolved, despite there being no justification for that under the TCA.
No time frame was set, nothing about when. Just a fact.
I hope Britain will join but a lot regarding the money has to be settled first too.
Some more trust seem to have been added lately and that of course is a good thing.
PS. Do you feel Britain has to and is forced to join too, due to the "shall".
No time frame was set, nothing about when. Just a fact.
The clock started ticking once the TCA was ratified, the UK is now waiting for the EU to honour it.
I hope Britain will join but a lot regarding the money has to be settled first too.
That was settled in the TCA, I suggest you read it. The UK has been setting aside the required amount since the TCA was ratified.
Some more trust seem to have been added lately and that of course is a good thing.
So they say.
PS. Do you feel Britain has to and is forced to join too, due to the "shall".
?? It was clear that the UK wanted to remain part of these programmes, and has been applying pressure to the EU to respect the agreement. That's why it agreed to have that wording in the TCA.
@Phil O'Sophical
Horizon Europe is an investment in research and technological development. with a budget of about 100 billion set up by the EU and some other countries.
It's not a piggy bank you join without first having an agreement on the money needed to insert into the project to take part in it.
Such details are not defined in the TCA, those details are agreed upon later should Britain join the project and in which parts.
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The last government IT project that was a roaring success was? Actually, let’s not be over ambitious. What was the last government project that was in anyway successful? Not just IT, doesn’t even have to be hugely successful.
Nope. I can’t think of any either. Not under this administration at any rate.
This government has the opposite of a Midas touch.
announced this morning, after the speculation for weeks, that some bits of HS2 will be delayed to save money. Since when has delaying anything ever saved money!!!! Time value of money means the costs will go up over time you'll save nothing. The only way to save would be scrap the fecking project, but of course the other economic law of throwing good money after bad will apply and they'll keep on going as they think they have invested too much already to scrap the project.
Doesn't know how contactless works... https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/rishi-sunak-contactless-fail-video-b2043035.html
Doesn't know how QR codes work: https://www.msn.com/en-in/weather/other/rishi-sunak-celebrates-uk-innovation-%E2%80%93-by-posting-a-qr-code-to-twitter/amp/ar-AA18hXEr
Perhaps this chimps would fair better with IT if they studied something other than economics / politics
It's the latter. Politicians like to cut ribbons on mega-projects. If they had asked those who want to use it, they would suggest 10 or maybe 100 smaller computers in universities and research institutes.
Nuclear weapons are mentioned. I had some experience with AWE, and they are not going to put any of their data on a shared computer!
Purchasing the chips from another country to stop them reaching other markets?
Essentially this wouldn't be that different to how the US got titanium to build the SR-71
Reuse some parts from other projects, with custom firmware, thermal management and PCBs made in the UK.
This would also be a lot cheaper, and provide much needed revenue for British business.
It's actually a quantitative easing project - pump £800M into the tech/IT industry on a zero delivery development project.
Like ESN which has gobbled £5.8Bn so far and produced nothing.other than excuses.
Still £800m is a lot of BBC model B's on a very large Econet. That would be super!
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