high-performance computing
➤ engineering – even in the case of one start- up at the STFC site at Daresbury, a small team designing tents for emergencies. But two industries that are likely to be
transformed by scalable, industry-standard HPC are life sciences and healthcare. Te uptake of HPC among life science
firms – even smaller ones and some start- ups – underscores why commercial firms are turning to HPC in place of enterprise or general purpose commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) big data systems. ‘Tere are many spin-off companies
working, who are trying to develop unique ways to compare and analyse genomic data,’ says Dell’s Bart Mellenbergh. ‘But places such as Cambridge are going much further. Tey’re not just looking at the genomic data; they’re looking at multiple sources of data, including medical records, genetic data and other sources of data. Tis is very data intensive, and is demanding HPC type capabilities rather than conventional big data processing.’ As scalable, industry-standard HPC use
accelerates among life science firms, there is likely to be a knock-on effect on hospitals. With individualised, or personalised, medicine and translational medicine increasingly being adopted within larger hospitals, the demand for cost-effective, scalable HPC systems within healthcare is likely to grow. For both translational and individualised medicine, the falling price of gene sequencers is likely to create increasing demand for HPC to process complex data. Te end benefit for patients includes safer, faster treatments for cancer and a host of other aggressive diseases that currently resist conventional medical approaches. ‘It’s relatively easy for hospitals to go out
and buy gene sequencers,’ says Mellenbergh. ‘Sequencers now are only a couple of thousand. Personalised medicine is getting much closer. Sequencing is relatively simple, but the back-end processing is hugely complex for personalised medicine, and that demands HPC. Tere you’ve got hospitals that haven’t a clue what HPC is about, but are just interested in a function. Tis is a huge shiſt in how HPC is likely to be used.’
New attitudes to HPC In many other ways, scalable industry- standard HPC is changing the way HPC is done, how it is programmed, even the culture, attitudes and self-identity of the people who engage in HPC. It’s a shiſt from an exceptional, science and maths focused world to one where HPC is just another technology for getting answers. ‘Tis spread of HPC into the commercial
8 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
space is changing the culture, and skills mix among HPC users,’ says Mellenbergh. ‘Te users who are coming to use HPC today do not have a background in HPC computing. ‘A couple of decades ago, there was deep technical knowledge of HPC among users.
SEQUENCING IS
RELATIVELY SIMPLE, BUT THE BACK-END
PROCESSING IS HUGELY COMPLEX FOR PERSONALISED MEDICINE, AND THAT DEMANDS HPC
Tey understood the architecture; they understood how to use the machines. Tey understood how to parallel program to extract the best out of the systems. ‘With the growth of HPC among
commercial organisations, that background doesn’t exist today among an increasing number of users. Tere is now a large HPC community that wants to use the machines but doesn’t have the technical background. Tis is especially true in the life sciences.’ Tere is a wide recognition that there
is not the same range of programming or systems management skills as there is
among HPC’s established scientific users. For HPE’s Scott Misage, the solution is to build solutions that are tailored to particular industry-use cases. Tese tailored solutions – which pre-package hardware, systems soſtware and applications into pre-tuned solutions – could increase even further the uptake of HPC by commercial companies. ‘We think this solution angle will further drive the usefulness of HPC into broader industries,’ says Misage. ‘We’re doing this in finance, life sciences for sequencing, in interior auto and aero design.’ For Lenovo, part of the solution is to
wrap up the complexity of HPC even more, creating portal tools that make it far easier to use the range of powerful Open Source tools that are increasingly available for industry- standard HPC platforms. ‘We’re involved in an effort to create a
graphical user interface (GUI) to make all those open source tools much easier to use, so there won’t be that steep learning curve and it will allow more people to use these tools,’ says Lenovo’s Scott Tease. For Dell’s Bart Mellenbergh, the spread of
HPC into the commercial arena is changing the mind-shiſt of users away from a focus on the machines and the technology, and towards a search for business answers. ‘Tere’s far less of the attitude: ‘I’m proud to be doing HPC, I’m proud to be a programmer’, and far more “No, I’m doing biology”,’ says Mellenbergh. l
www.scientific-computing.com
Albert Einstein C of Medicine New City, New York
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