The supercomputer Hephaestus was built at the Made in Sheffield member's environmentally-friendly factory on the Parkwood Business Park. Nine VeryPC Janus II GreenServers offer an impressive amount of processing power and by using energy-efficient technology, Hephaestus does its work using far less power than a "normal" supercomputer.
Electro-Ceramics post-doctoral research assistant Alex Goncharov said: "The computational demands of our research mean we need an extraordinary amount of processing performance. Large-scale simulations can only be practically achieved with a supercomputer like Hephaestus."
Peter Hopton, MD of VeryPC is as proud of the company's links to Sheffield as he is of its range of innovative energy-saving computers.
He said: "We're proud to display the Made in Sheffield mark on our products. We take our role within the local economy very seriously, and love the fact that our message, a progressive, environmentally-aware approach to IT and business is sent out to the world so clearly aligned with our fantastic city."
Peter established the company in a shop on Langsett Road in 2004. Five years on, VeryPC's GreenPCs and GreenServers are being used nationally and internationally in schools, businesses, local and central government. VeryPC has garnered a host of prestigious national and international awards, including, most recently, from SustainIT, a 'Special Award for Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable IT'.
VeryPC has also unveiled its latest invention for cutting the energy wasted by computers. The award winning firm has launched PecoBOO – a piece of software that recognises when you stop looking at your computer monitor and puts it on standby, instantly cutting the power it is using by a factor of more than 100.
PecoBOO uses a standard webcam and some clever software, developed at its Parkwood Road Business Park headquarters, that recognises when you turn away from the screen, unlike conventional power management systems that put a computer on standby if a key isn't pressed or a mouse isn't moved within a certain time.
VeryPC's research shows that many users turn conventional systems off to avoid the irritation of the screen going blank when they are watching a piece of video, reading some text or looking and thinking.
What's more, some systems display a screen saver, which doesn't do anything for energy conservation and isn't really needed with modern day screens, while others take time to power back up when you do hit a key or move the mouse.
VeryPC's founder, Peter Hopton explains what started the company on the four month PecoBOO development programme.
"With many other computers on the market, the PC box consumes far more energy than its LCD monitor.
"We've worked so hard on energy saving at VeryPC that we've flipped that around. Now many of our GreenPCs use as little as half the power of their display.
"We realised that we had to find a way to apply better energy savings to the display itself. This revolutionary combination of facial detection with power management takes energy saving on your computer to a new level."
Peter Hopton likens PecoBOO to the light in a fridge, which switches off when you close the door.
He says it can cut the power consumed by a typical LCD monitor from about 40 Watts to 0.3 Watts when the user isn't looking at the screen and power everything up again in a second or less.
Privacy advocates need not be worried about the software, he stresses.
"PecoBOO uses face detection, not face recognition. It cannot tell who you are or even distinguish one user from another. No data is recorded. PecoBOO is not a security tool, it's an energy saving tool," he says.
"Our mantra is sustainability without compromise," adds Peter Hopton.


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