HPC 2015-16 | Integrators
Solutions not just technology
Companies, from integrators to high-end suppliers, are all focused on the customer, as Tom Wilkie discovers in a survey of the marketplace for HPC systems
It is perhaps inevitable that, in a publication such as Scientific Computing World, editorial coverage of high-performance computing should be dominated by superlatives; journalists are naturally drawn to write about the first; the biggest; the fastest; the most energy efficient; the unique. Tus, for example, the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing tends to be the focus in Germany, for that is where the largest machines are based. In contrast, only recently has there been an article on our website (a portal opens to German HPC centres), featuring the Gauss Alliance, which is made up from the slightly smaller, university-based supercomputers. But this selectivity is distorting. At the
end of this year, Transtec expects to deliver a 1,100 node Lenovo cluster to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in what is the largest contract in Transtec’s history. Earlier this year, in April, Oxford University officially inaugurated its own Lenovo cluster, where the integrator this time was OCF. At the University of Vienna, in the summer of last year, ClusterVision installed Europe’s first high-performance cluster to be cooled by total immersion in mineral oil. Also on the ‘green IT’ front, Megware has just completed the installation of a cluster at the University of Greifswald in Germany, involving direct hot water cooling, where the waste heat is repurposed to a district heating circuit in the datacentre building, in accordance with the university’s strategy of creating a ‘CO2
-
neutral university’. Tere are many more contracts for
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business and industrial customers than academic institutions, but these seldom get much attention. Very oſten the customer insists on commercial secrecy in the contract, so that many such installations cannot be reported. Here the distorting selectivity is not journalistic caprice, but fear of disclosing business sensitive information. (Te Formula 1 car racing companies, for example, all make extensive use of high-performance computing, but it is impossible to extract details of their installations.) Te marketplace for HPC systems is
clearly more subtle and complicated than a concentration on the highest end machines,
“We see ourselves as a solution provider, not a manufacturer ”
or on academic contracts, might indicate. Lenovo manufactures and sells HPC systems, but its machines also reach end-users through the mediation of integrators such as Transtec and OCF. And Lenovo is not alone; NEC and Huawei are other examples of manufacturers who partner with integrators. Dell has a close business relationship with ClusterVision. In a neat inversion of the pattern, Bull, the
biggest European supercomputer supplier, regards Atos, now its parent company, as an integrator, albeit one dedicated solely to selling Bull hardware. Only a few companies, Cray is one
example, tend not to use integrators. While Cray has a very distinct commercial strategy of aiming only at the very high end of the
market, nonetheless it is not stretching the meaning of the word too much to regard Cray itself as being sometimes its own integrator. Its averred policy is to offer what it considers the best technology, whether it originated within the company or is brought in from outside. IBM’s strategy is different; it has settled on
the Power architecture and aims to extend its reach by building cooperation through the Open Power Foundation, of which both Bull and OCF are members. Nonetheless, in this short survey of the HPC marketplace, IBM appears to be a bit of an outlier. Large supercomputing centres have
their own reservoir of expertise and talent,
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