Oxford University: The perfect setting for HPC discussions

IDC, one of the premier analyst firms who closely tracks trends in the IT industry, hosted a High Performance Computing (HPC) forum at Oxford University.  Oxford is one of the oldest Universities in the world but the discussions at this event were about leading edge technologies that solve current issues and business needs.  SUSE, IDC, National Cancer Institute, NASA, and others all contributed to the discussion. I learned there are only two companies building super-sonic fighter jets and SUSE partners with both of them to provide a platform that matches this critical engineering and manufacturing platform. I also learned that most of the Formula 1 engineering teams are partnering with SUSE to make their cars faster. The National Cancer Institute discussed HPC needs to deliver Photo-Immunotherapy research—most of the words they discussed I can’t even pronounce let alone spell them. Impressive.

HPC in the cloud was discussed in detail. But many came to the conclusion that HPC in the cloud is actually really expensive.   HPC computations on-prem is the way to go if you want to do more than just dabble with HPC.  If you need to save money, the way to reduce costs is the development of new computational algorithms—instead of buying more compute power make the algorithms more efficient.

This event was an “eye opener” on what is happening today in the HPC community and I realized how much SUSE has been a real partner with those doing big and complex stuff. My compliments to IDC for having the vision to bring these customers together and provide a forum to discuss the global HPC issues and solutions.