CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Research Computing Services

Open-knowledge reference entry

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 11, 2025
Entity authorityQ7315073
Source-derived summary

Research Computing Services (separated in August 2007 from the former Manchester Computing at the University of Manchester), provides the focus for the University of Manchester's activities in supercomputing or high-performance computing, grid computing or e-science and computational science. Research Computing Services activities include services, training and research & development.

Supercomputers

The University of Manchester has been home to many supercomputers, starting from the 1948 Manchester Baby - the world's first stored program computer. Others have included CDC7600 (1972, and a second in 1977), a CDC Cyber 205, VP1200, VPX and 240/10. The CSAR service (see below) supercomputers included a 576 PE Cray T3E-1200E (1998, upgraded to 816PE in 2000), and SGI Origin 3000 (2001) and Altix (2003) systems. More recently some large clusters (e.g., the 200 processor Dell EM64T cluster) have been installed.

National Computing Services

Research Computing Services and its predecessors (Manchester Computing etc.) have been providing (high performance) computing services nationally in the UK since the 1970s. Manchester Computing operated the UK's 1998-2006 national supercomputer service CSAR with SGI and CSC Ltd. It currently operates other national computer services in the UK, including the Access Grid Support Centre (AGSC) and, as part of consortia, the UK National Grid Service (NGS) and North West Grid.

Research Centres

Research Computing Services is a part of several research centres including E-Science North West (ESNW) Archived 20 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine, and the UK's National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Research Computing Services” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Research, Computing and Services, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2007, 1948, 1972, 1977—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Research, Computing and Services is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “open-knowledge reference entry” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7315073. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2007, 1948, 1972 and 1977.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Research Computing Services”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Research Computing Services primary sources, Research Computing Services archive and Research research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Research Computing Services”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Research Computing Services” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.