HPC: More than Supercomputers & Research
We’re faced with unprecedented demand for compute in an environment without enough power to run it. Surely HPC has at least some of the answers in this space.
At its inception, HPC was special. It was something needed by a very small number of people and institutions around the world. It made sense that it was something niche. After all, how many people really needed the ability to string together commoditised hardware to obtain teraflops of compute. A few scientists, a couple of engineers, some banks and that was your lot.
Several times in 2024 I asked the question, “What is HPC?”. I attempted to answer it a couple of times too. I wasn’t just being obstinate. Rather I’m trying to make a point.
Let me ask another question though. What do HPC engineers do? At its most basic level they take compute that no longer fits onto a single machine, optimize the hell out of it and then run it across thousands of computers. In case you hadn’t noticed half the world seems to need to do that right now.
My first wish for 2025 is for HPC folk to realise this. To step up and out of their niche and use that ability to help solve the same problem in multiple domains that see HPC as a dinosaur and don’t have the first inkling of an idea that we have the solutions to their problems.
The whole world is slowly realising that even if they could buy all the compute they need, we simply don’t have the electricity to run all of it! We are going to have to do more with less. Guess who’s been doing that for decades already?
Power constrained architectures are nothing new in the mobile space but we’re now having to deal with that reality in the data centre. Arm and AMD’s relentless improvements in power efficiency in CPUs doesn’t mean diddly squat when NVIDIA’s GPUs are eating every last electron they can find.
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