HPC YEARBOOK 2021/22


Supporting science with HPC


HPC integrators provide value to scientific and research organisations through management and support of HPC resources, finds Robert Roe


H


PC integrators can help scientists and HPC research centres through the provisioning and management of clusters. As the number of applications and potential user groups for HPC continues to expand, supporting domain expert scientists use and access of HPC resources is increasingly important. While just 10 years ago a cluster


would have been used by just a few departments at a University, now there is a huge pool of potential users from non-traditional HPC applications. This also includes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) as well as big data or applying advanced analytics to data sets from research areas that would previously not have been interested in the use of HPC systems. This culminates in a growing need


to support and facilitate the use of HPC resources in academia or research and development. These organisations can either choose to employ the staff to support this infrastructure or try to outsource some or all of these processes to companies experienced in the management and support of HPC systems. HPC integrators can help an organisation choose the right technology to support their application portfolio – and, moreover, integrators can also manage and support the HPC system, which reduces overheads and the need to provide a large in-house team to support the use of HPC. Technical support, maintenance, consulting services or project


14 The need “


complex than ever “


management – and even fully managed HPC services – can be delivered by HPC integrators in order to reduce the burden to support technical IT departments and scientists’ use of HPC. Maintenance, for example, can help reduce the downtime of HPC systems and help to predict the failure of systems or components. Increasing the time that a computing service is available also increases the amount of scientific output that a HPC system can generate. Integrators can also support research centres that need access to specialised clusters to support domain specialists who need access to HPC. This is seen in areas such as biomedical research, engineering, chemistry, cosmology, weather and climate simulation and other areas of research


creating products today more


apparent than in manufacturing, where we are


for agility is never more


that are heavily focused on simulation or large scale data analysis. For example, Biomedical research


centres may need access to very large storage resources to support large data sets that they are dealing with. Engineers may need access to specialised hardware that can support large scale simulations in order to generate insight into ongoing projects. HPC can also speed up the time to get new components and systems to market.


OCF supports engineering research In a recent blog post, Andrew Dean, sales director at OCF said: ‘The need for agility is never more apparent than in manufacturing, where we are creating products today more complex than ever – especially when taking advantage of the latest manufacturing techniques such as additive and subtractive manufacturing. Traditional design and manufacture methodologies, as well as the once leisurely timeframes, are simply not the way to stay ahead of the competition today.’ ‘Computer-based simulation has


been well-established for decades, but we are continuing to see smaller organisations and engineering teams realising its potential for the first time,’ added Dean. ‘Being able to take advantage of simulating tests that would be impractical or uneconomical to carry out on physical prototypes.’ When designing and validating a


product using digital twins or simulation models, engineers can quickly modify designs and create alterations and new iterations of components quickly. This can accelerate time to market or help an organisation innovate on designs before a new product is brought to market. The benefits mean that engineering simulation makes sense from a financial point of view for a wider range of end-users across various industrial sectors and organisation sizes.


‘Whilst the benefits of engineering simulation are clear, in many organisations when the use of engineering simulation becomes an established part of the product development process, innovation can quickly become reduced by IT equipment, often relying on single- user workstations, that are being used to process these simulations,’ added Dean.


www.scientific-computing.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42