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== What is the NW-Grid Service? ==

You can get a 2-page colour brochure to print off here [[http://www.grids.ac.uk/NWGrid/what_is_nw-grid_4.pdf|PDF]].

A full report of our activity over the first four years can be found here [[http://www.grids.ac.uk/NWGrid/Evaluation-Report-Final-revised.pdf|PDF]].

The North West Grid, NW-GRID, is a collaboration between Daresbury Laboratory and the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester. With the help of NWDA funding, we have established and operate a computational Grid comprising of high-performance computing systems coupled by a high-speed private fibre network between the sites. NW-GRID offers world-class services founded in the deployment and exploitation of Grid middleware technologies enabling the capabilities of the Grid to be realised in leading-edge computational science and engineering applications.

University of Central Lancaster has recently joined the NW-GRID and the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory has contributed resources.

By subscribing to NW-GRID you can gain assess to many high-performance computer systems, the core of which is connected via a dedicated optical network. A full overview can be found on our [[Infrastructure|infrastructure]] pages.

=== The Technology ===

For an introduction to Grid computing, HPC and related technologies see the ReDRESS Learning Space Catalogue: 
http://redress.lancs.ac.uk/Learning_Space/ .

=== What can NW-GRID be used for? ===

Computational power in itself is of no immediate benefit. Where NW-GRID creates real value for your project is the combined access to hardware, open source and commercial applications and expert knowledge from the partner sites. NW-GRID offers a pay-as-you-go service for access to computational resources, application licenses and expertise with a number of pricing models to meet your growing requirements.

Currently NW-GRID has completed simulation and modelling projects in the following sectors. Separate technical case studies are available for each.

 * Mechanical Engineering;
 * Chemistry (atomistic, quantum and meso-scale);
 * Physics;
 * Biochemistry and Bioinformatics;
 * Medical and Pharmaceutical;
 * Social Science (statistical analysis and modelling);
 * Data and Text Mining;
 * Economics and Financial;
 * Geo-spatial and Geological;
 * Food and Beverages;
 * Nano-technology;
 * Fluid Dynamics and Capillary Flow;
 * Materials Science;
 * Anatomy and Movement;
 * Aerodynamics and Aircraft Engineering;
 * Weather and Climate modelling and prediction;
 * Energy and the Environment.

For further information about access and the services available see the [[Contacts|contacts]] page.