Report by the Working Party of the Science and Engineering Research Council, Engineering Board Computing Facilities Committee, October 1985, ISBN 0 902376 00 4.

The committee were Professor S F Bush (Chairman) UMIST, Mr R D Crook, ICI plc, Professor D Lewin, University of East Anglia, Professor C McGreavy, University of Leeds, Professor A R S Ponter, University of Leicester, Professor I M Smith, University of Manchester, Professor E B Spratt, University of Kent and Dr R D Mount (Secretary) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Preface

This report is about the provision the Engineering Board needs to make over the next decade for computing facilities for the community it supports in universities and polytechnics. SERC provision for computing dedicated specifically to engineering research was first reported on twelve years ago. Following this, in 1975, the Engineering Board set up a technical group under the chairmanship of Professor Howard Rosenbrock. The outcome of the technical group’s report was the establishment of the Interactive Computing Facility (ICF) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The ICF has had and continues to have a powerful influence on the way engineering research is conducted in the academic community. Since then the provision of computing services by SERC for engineers has diversified and there have been important developments in computing technology and engineering practice. It is therefore timely to carry out a review of engineers’ needs for computing that will enable the Board to plan for the necessary provision over the next decade.

We have consulted widely to reach our conclusions, and the main items of evidence are listed in Appendix 3 of this report. The conclusions of our study and our recommendations are listed separately at the beginning of the report, with expansions on the reasoning behind them in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 1 presents a summary of existing Engineering Board computing provision and Chapter 2 discusses submissions received by the Working Party.

See also the section on Systems Design & Control.