What is HPC and Why we Need to Care

What is high performance computing? This isn’t a rhetorical question. 

I wrote a post not too long ago trying to explain HPC in a way that my family could understand. Something I could point them to when they asked me yet again what on earth it is that I do. I was quite proud of my effort. I thought it explained things rather well. I was wrong. My family told me in no uncertain terms it doesn’t explain anything at all, and they are still non the wiser.

So here I am, trying again. But this time I thought I’d start by seeing what other people say it is. So, I checked with Google which told me that HPC is all about using supercomputers. Fair. I checked what a supercomputer is and that’s just something that allows me to do HPC. :cry

I asked ChatGPT. It gave me a fairly good answer actually.

“High-Performance Computing (HPC) refers to the use of powerful computers, software, and networking to solve complex problems and process large amounts of data at high speeds. HPC systems are capable of performing trillions of calculations per second and are used in various industries to tackle tasks that are too intensive for standard computers.” - ChatGPT (GPT-4o) 

Just one problem though, I’m pretty sure my iPad can do more than 1 teraflop. So technically that would meet the definition above. Is using my iPad HPC?

Does something stop being HPC with the passage of time as our processors get more powerful? Something that used to take a whole rack can now be run on a Mac Mini, is it still HPC?

I’m being deliberately provocative to an extent, but these are actually important questions. Our ability to define what HPC is affects our ability to define what it should become. It affects how we are perceived outside of the HPC community. It affects our ability to attract new talent, funding and adoption. Most if all it affects how we see ourselves and what technologies we use to solve these problems.