Big data is shifting the focus of high-performance computing toward machine learning and artificial intelligence, according to Bill Mannel (pictured, left), vice president and general manager, High-Performance Computing and artificial intelligence, at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

“Typically, we built equations which then generated data; now we’re actually doing the reverse, which is, we take the data and then build equations to understand the data,” he said.

Big data and artificial intelligence are also informing the HPC products that HPE is developing, Mannel explained.

He and Nicholas Nystrom (pictured, left), senior director of research at Carnegie Mellon University’s Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during HPE Discover in Las Vegas, Nevada. (* Disclosure below.)

Beyond HPE’s efforts to productize it, HPC’s presence in academics is also expanding, according to Nicholas Nystrom (pictured, right), senior director of research at Carnegie Mellon University’s Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

The center shares its federally funded supercomputer with industrial and corporate users chosen via peer review once per quarter.

“It brings people who have never used high-performance computing before to be able to use HPC seamlessly almost as a cloud,” Nystrom said.

Shrink-wrapped supercomputer

Those who don’t make the cut might consider products like those HPE is bringing to market with Silicon Graphics International Corp, an HPC company it acquired last year.

“Our Gen10 [secure servers]-based products are on target, and they’re going to be releasing over the next few months,” Mannel said.

The products developed with SGI are optimized specifically for HPC and artificial intelligence, Mannel added.

“We have a platform called the Apollo 6500, which is used by a lot of companies to do AI work, so it’s a very dense GPU platform and does a lot of processing in terms of video, audio — these types of things that are used a lot in some of the workflows around AI,” he stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of HPE Discover US 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover US 2017. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. nor other sponsors have editorial control on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE