You may have heard alot about HPC. In this age, the advancement of technology amazes us every day. HPC is of prominent advancements that really helps us have easier life. in this essay, eveything about HPC is explained.
HPC is the ability to process intensive computing tasks at high speeds mainly by supercomputers. It is the abbreviation form of High Performance Computing and has a widespread application in the world. For HPC, parallel processing is the key to process the problems in such speeds. In fact, HPC works via numerous servers in parallel which makes it possible to divide the big problem into many smaller parts and each part is processed by the servers. Consequently, the problem is solved in much less time.
HPC systems operate like nanomaterials; nanomaterials boost performance because the particles are in nano size and the number of these nano-sized particles is countless. Actually it is the countless number of operaters that considerably improve efficiency and reduce time. HPC systems are usually equipped with super-powerful hardwares. CPU cores up to 32, RAM up to 32 GB, and storage up to 1 TB SSD are some requirements that an HPC system should have.
First of all, let’s get familiar with some basic conceptions that you have to know about HPC:
HPC node: A node is a computing unit in an HPC cluster. Cluster is a group of nodes. Each node has memory, processors, storage and network interface. In HPC system thousands of nodes are connected to each other. Together, they provide a great computational power that meet the needs of massive calculations.
Node vs server: nodes and servers are related in HPC but acually they have different roles. Basically, nodes are designed for parallel computation and they are used to form a cluster. They are also dependent on the cluster infrastructure. on the contrary, servers usually provide several services and can be used standalone. So, servers are more widely used even in non-compuational tasks.
FLOP: FLOP refers to HPC computational performance. It stands for Floating Point Operations Per Second and measures the number floating point operations that an HPC system can do in one second. Today, modern supercomputers as advanced HPC systems can process problems in the range of peta and exaFLOPS which means they can do 10 to power 15 and 18 operations per second respectively. The more nodes and clusters are provided for an HPC system, the better performance it has.
The long of story HPC traces back to 1950s when first computers were being developed. At the time, HPC systems were used for military, government, cryptography and nuclear investigations. Seymour Cray was of pioneers to design parallel computing systems to increase performance. in 1964, he and colleagues built the first supercomputer and called it CDC 6600. It should be mentioned that some powerful computers had been built before by others, but it was the CDC 6600, with the performance of up to 3 megaFLOPS, that is considered as the first supercomputer.
As time passed on, Cray as an HPC market leader tried to develop supercomputers performance. In 1976 and 1985, Cray-1 and Cray-2 were built by him respectively; with Cray-2 performance to 1.9 gigaFLOPS. In 1990s, HPC systems are built with thousands of processors which lead to much higher processing speeds. As HPC systems developed worldwide, their performance surpassed each other and the performance world record broke from time to time. This procedure continues to this day.
You may ask “The terms HPC and supercomputer, can they be used interchangeably?” No!
They do the same thing but are not exactly the same. As mentioned above, HPC is the ability to process intensive computing tasks at high speeds mainly by supercomputers. In fact, HPC is a broad group of high-performance computing systems and a supercomputer is a subset of HPC. HPC is more flexible and includes various systems and wide range of applications. Supercomputers are limited to one specialized field with extremely high performance. Other than supercomputing, HPC includes cluster computing, grid computing, could computing, edge computing, and quantum computing. These subsets are not thoroughly independant of eachother. They all have a same goal but the method differs.
Today, HPC is a key player in a wide range of activities. Here, some of the most important applications are introduced:
Medical research and disease fighting: Machine learning algorithms and big data analysis of diseases by HPC can help medical researchers to diagnose diseases faster and treat them better, including cancer and COVID-19. Besides, for the development of new drugs, treatments for cancer and rare genetic disorders, as well as for research into the production and evolution of epidemics, HPC has a significant role.
Nuclear fusion research: To test and evaluate nuclear explosions and weapons, nuclear fusion reactors and virtual environments have to be built and simulated.
Development of next generation materials: Using deep learning algorithms by HPC help human identify better materials for batteries, building materials, etc. Thus, HPC helps us optimize the earth resources and reach sustainability.
Raw material exploration for industry: HPC helps us find potentialities resources of materials such as oil, gas, metals, etc for industry.
Real-time programs: When you want to play an online game, there may be plenty of users in the tournaments which increase latency or make the host server collapse. HPC can handle the big process.
Advancement in the field of artificial intelligence: HPC is used as a reliable environment to run artificial intelligence algorithms which lead to advances in natural language processing, image recognition, and many more areas.
Engineering: In analysis of large and tiny structures such as bridges, buildings, and molecules arrangement, HPC paves the way for engineers to carefully examine complex models.
Climate change and weather research: HPC can be used to understand weather patterns and predict the effect of extreme weather events. Also, it helps us analyze land, ocean and polar glaciers.
Data analysis: In various industries, data analysis tools and artificial intelligence are used to extract valuable information. HPC provides them by superfast parallel processing.
Astrophysics: Simulating the formation and evolution of stars, galaxies, and the universe is something that requires HPC. Too many variables are there in the simulation such as light, gravity, positions of the objects, etc.
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