Thanks to cognitive computing trends aimed at solving the world’s most complex problems, interest in the world’s most powerful computing technology is on the rise. At this year’s Supercomputing Conference, currently underway in Denver, Colorado, SiliconANGLE will be at the event with exclusive commentary and interviews from our roving news desk, theCUBE. (* Disclosure below.) TheCUBE team will be exploring the market opportunities in supercomputing, as well the developments from the big players in the market, both in the U.S. and in China.

Interest in supercomputing has grown thanks to cloud trends and new market opportunities in autonomous vehicles, smart cities and space exploration. And with a compound annual growth rate of seven percent, the global supercomputer market is expected to reach USD $4.95 billion by 2021, according to research from Technavio. To help improve the reliability and strength of product offerings, supercomputers are rapidly being adopted by research and academic institutions, as well as energy, oil, and gas and manufacturing industries. 

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s Spaceborne Computer, an experiment conducted with NASA to determine the suitability of earthbound off-the-shelf computers for the unique challenges of spaceflight, successfully made it to the International Space Station National Lab and was powered up a month after leaving earth on the SpaceX CRS-12 rocket.

Also looking to transform modern transport, Google LLC and Volkswagen AG announced a partnership this week. The collaboration will explore how quantum computing can be used to solve fundamental car-related problems, including optimizing traffic flow, making machine learning more intelligent, and creating new battery technologies that will extend range and charging rates.

In an attempt to keep up with China, currently home of the two fastest supercomputers in the world, the United States Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project announced an investment of $258 million to build the nation’s first exascale supercomputer. Currently, the U.S. possesses only the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world, after recently being edged out of third spot by an upgraded Swiss supercomputer called Piz Daint.  

The money has been awarded to Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Cray Inc., HPE, IBM Corp., Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. who, together with their own funding, will work on deploying a single exascale supercomputer by 2021.

The keynote address will be presented by Professor Philip Diamond, director general of the international Square Kilometer Array, or SKA, project, and Dr. Rosie Bolton, SKA regional center project scientist and project scientist for the international engineering consortium designing the high-performance computers. They will present on SKA’s international partnership that plans to map the entire sky and study it in greater detail than ever before.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch all of theCUBE interviews that will be taking place at the Supercomputing Conference, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s event on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE’s dedicated website

All of theCUBE’s exclusive interviews from the Supercomputing Conference will be available on theCUBE’s dedicated website.

The list of guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE is still being finalized, but you can stay updated on theCUBE’s dedicated website.

Watch on the SiliconANGLE YouTube channel

All of theCUBE interviews from the Supercomputing Conference, which runs until Nov. 17, will also be loaded onto SiliconANGLE’s dedicated YouTube channel.

Cubecasts

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on both SoundCloud and iTunes, which you can enjoy while on the go.

(* Disclosure: Some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: Supercomputing Conference 2017