HPC and Engineering

Dear Desktop Engineering Reader:

There’s no getting around it: High-performance computing has or will change your desktop and the way you work with engineering applications. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking numerical analysis, CAD, simulation, visualization or pretty much anything else you can think of. HPC is changing everything. Maybe HPC has already changed your processes. Or perhaps you’re still on the sidelines wondering what’s in HPC for you or how you go about getting into it. Desktop Engineering wondered what you are doing as well. After all, DE’s mission is to provide you with the news and information you need to succeed.

So, Desktop Engineering surveyed readers like you to figure out your understanding of HPC so that content development met your informational needs. IBM Platform Computing, a company which pundits who track these sort of things regard as a leading force in infrastructure management software and services for technical computing, analytics, Big Data, HPC cloud and HPC cluster computing environments, sponsored the survey. So, you might say each organization had a vested interest in the results. But there’s somebody else quite interested in the survey results: You.

At the other end of today’s Check It Out link, you can download an executive summary of the survey results. It makes for fascinating reading. From this brief four-page PDF, you can more easily position and compare yourself and your organization vis-à-vis HPC with your industry colleagues.

The value of this survey for you is that it provides a glimpse into what “the other guys” are doing, thinking about maybe doing, actively planning to do or not doing at all. Maybe it has the information you need to forge ahead with what you’re doing. Or it could provide a measure of relief because you’ve had that uneasy feeling that you’re behind the eight ball. For example, it might be comforting to know that nearly 25% of respondents reported that they don’t know how to go about moving an application from the desktop to an HPC cluster.

What sort of data is in this executive summary? The summary reports on four main topics. These are Familiarity with High Performance Clusters, Who is Primarily Responsible for Cluster Management, Who Is Using the Cluster and the Barriers to Cluster Adoption.

Each section provides an at-a-glance graph of what respondents reported and the percentage of responses to the questions asked. All the graphs are complemented with explanatory bullet points that provide further details. Take that nearly 25% who don’t know how to migrate an application from a workstation to a cluster. A total of 31% of the survey respondents said that they didn’t have the IT skills in-house to manage an HPC cluster.

How you cross-tab information such as that to benefit your organization is something the report doesn’t — and can’t — do for you. But it does provide the data for you to work with as you develop your HPC clustering strategy to run your compute- and data-intensive CAE and visualization applications. One thing is clear from this report: There are those who are in the know and those who may soon find themselves behind the technology curve.

The interest for information on HPC clustering and its applications is as huge as the Big Data you’re trying to deal with. If you search for HPC on the DE website, you’ll get 47 pages of hits alone. But the bigger hit might well be coming for those running late on developing an HPC strategy or in the dark as to what their competitors are up to. This executive summary provides some light on the subject. Hit today’s Check It Out link and download your complimentary copy of the “High Performance Cluster Computing Survey” from DE and IBM Platform Computing.

Thanks, pal. – Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood

Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

Click here to download the “High Performance Cluster Computing Survey” from DE and IBM Platform Computing.