Quantum #77

This week has been back to normal life with a bump. Swapping out downhill biking and camping for dentists’ appointments, leaky plumbing and car maintenance. I think working weekends for several months and ignoring all the other bits that involve being an adult has probably made it worse too 😩

Just when I thought we were done with our next paper I think we’re about to run into some scope creep courtesy of Google and Microsoft. Both have made available new VMs (in public preview) based on 5^thgeneration EPYC CPUs this week. How about letting us get access during private preview next time huh! 😉

HPC Club in Bristol is now fully booked and we’ve had a few emails asking if there are spaces available. If you’ve booked and know you won’t be able to make it any longer, please do cancel your place so that someone else can attend.

Lastly, I’ve been learning just how fragile GPUs are. More on that later this week… 

In The News

Updates from the big three clouds on all things HPC.

HPC Cloud Updates WE 14 Sep 2025

AWS Its been quiet for a while on the HPC front over at AWS… I wonder if they’re cooking up something? I guess its not that much longer to go till SC and reinvent so we will just have to wait and see. Nothing but a new regional instances

Flux by HMx LabsHamza

Oracle seems to have set its sites rather high. I wonder what this means for HPC on cloud though. They’re clearly aiming for the AI compute market and HPC is busy attempting to modernise with increased use of GPUs, so is HPC on Oracle something we should be thinking about? Will Oracle provide anything more than IaaS and aim to compete with services such as PCS from AWS too? So many questions.

Oracle Cloud Can Be As Big As AWS This Decade

Wouldn’t it be funny if Larry Ellison, who has become the elder statesman of the datacenter, had the last laugh on the cloud builders and model builders

The Next PlatformTimothy Prickett Morgan

Then again, what happens if AI catches a cold. Will we give up on massive scale GPU data centres? Or will HPC thrive on super cheap compute that no one else can use?

When AI Sneezes, Do We All Catch a Cold?

At one point in the past, the phrase “When GM sneezes, the US catches a cold” was bantered around to signify how much of the economy was dominated by car […]

HPCwireDoug Eadline

Then again, maybe you won’t even be able to access your cloud HPC if the wrong person gets upset. Probably not immediate concern for most right now but perhaps something to keep in mind

Microsoft briefly cut off Indian company’s cloud

: Oh, the irony of Europe demonstrating the importance of the sovereign cloud it craves

The RegisterSimon Sharwood

From HMx Labs

Chapter 2 of An Intro to Supercomputing is finally live. Here’s a few excuses as to why its late:

What’s Inside a Supercomputer?

About 3 months late but Chapter 2 of an Introduction to Supercomputing is finally available!

Flux by HMx LabsHamza

Oh the chapter itself?

Chapter 2: The Assembly

What goes into making a super computer? A look at the hardware that goes into making the fasters computers on the planet hum. With Guest Author: Sarina Sit (AMD)

Flux by HMx LabsSarina Sit

Know someone else who might like to read this newsletter? Forward this on to them or even better, ask them to sign up here: https://cloudhpc.news