applications
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choosing a more powerful computer. Will you buy a new computer or use someone else’s computer? What matters for choosing between the two? If buying a new computer, will you navigate complexities of technology options, vendors, and configuration, or ask an expert to help you? If using someone else’s computer, will that be a supercomputer centre or ‘the cloud’? Which centre or which cloud? Even once you have access to a more
powerful computer, there is no guarantee that your application will simply drop onto it and chuck out results at a dramatically better pace. It turns out that the soſtware usually needs to be adapted to get the promised performance of the new hardware. Tis is especially true if you are looking at some form of supercomputer or high- performance computing (HPC) system, where many computer nodes are combined to create a more powerful computing platform. No, don’t give up yet. Yes, this dream is
turning into complexity and the whiff of money plus effort. However, there are an exciting wealth of success stories about step-changes in business performance or science capability from those who have trodden this path. For some businesses, a few per cent improvement in application performance is a business-changing result.
30 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
Tere are examples of this in sectors such as finance, sports, oil and gas, security, and manufacturing. For others, the application performance change must be twice or 10 times, or even more, to deliver a meaningful impact on the business or science. Te clear evidence of those who have tried is that the result is worth the effort.
THE SOFTWARE CAN BE TUNED TO USE NEW HARDWARE TECHNOLOGIES OPTIMALLY, OR HAVE FASTER OR MORE SCALABLE ALGORITHMS IMPLEMENTED, OR OTHER SOFTWARE PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS
So, motivational bit over, back to those
catches. We explored how getting more powerful hardware can be hard, but making the soſtware smarter is oſten an even bigger challenge. If you use proprietary application soſtware, then you are reliant on your soſtware vendor to solve this problem for you. Some ISVs have a positive track record
here, but the hard earned reputation of many ISVs is one of slow adoption of new technologies or performance enhancing methods such as algorithmic innovation, or scalable parallel implementations. If you are using open-source application
soſtware (see my article in the April/May issue on open-source vs. proprietary) or soſtware developed in-house, then the possibilities are more flexible. Te soſtware can be tuned to use new hardware technologies optimally, or have faster or more scalable algorithms implemented or other soſtware performance enhancements. Te catch is that this requires skills and
experience that are not part of the normal toolset of most soſtware developers, scientists, or users. Te choice becomes one of either investing time, effort and money into learning the skills to do it yourself, or paying an appropriate professional to do the work. Tis is especially true if chasing the real step changes offered by HPC systems. So, it’s not easy. But remember the motivational bit? I promised I’d talk about solutions to the skills barriers, and this is a good time to start. Tere are two skills issues to address
– getting the right hardware and making the soſtware smarter. As we noted above, making the soſtware smarter is oſten needed to benefit properly from new hardware too.
@scwmagazine l
www.scientific-computing.com ➤
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