A multi-million pound investment in an Edinburgh-based supercomputer will enable it to tackle complex scientific challenges.

Edinburgh University's Cirrus system is rented out to business and helps bring products to market.

The £2.4m upgrade will allow it to simulate climate change events or analyse financial markets.

Cirrus has more than 10,000 processing "cores", while a typical home PC will have two or four.

The machine will have more than five times its current capacity when the upgrade is complete, as well as improved storage.

It is housed at the university's EPCC centre in Easter Bush.

Funding for the upgrade comes from a £20m investment in the UK's high performance computing from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

EPCC director, professor Mark Parsons, said: "EPCC is very proud to have won this funding, which has allowed us to hugely expand our Cirrus system.

"This will greatly benefit our scientific researchers and provide our industry users with a much larger resource."