Computing hardware technology has usually advanced at a rapid pace to keep up with society’s needs. After years of seemingly incremental improvements, however, high-performance computing recently made significant headway.

“We just delivered the world’s first exascale system,” said Justin Hotard (pictured), executive vice president and general manager for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. “And that’s a huge milestone for our industry, a breakthrough. Thirteen years ago, we did the first petascale system; now we’re doing the first exascale system. Huge advance forward.”

Hotard spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin at HPE Discover, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the broader implications of the exascale shift in areas like quantum computing and artificial intelligence. (* Disclosure below.)

Unlocking new computing possibilities

TheCUBE has consistently tracked the growth of HPC and supercomputing, and HPE has always placed itself at the cutting edge of that field. Its newly unveiled system, according to Hotard, is poised to deliver new applications and workloads — in addition to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

“We’re at the beginning of being able to do proper quantum simulations, which will lead us to a much brighter future with quantum and then actually better and more granular models, which have the ability to really change the world,” he said.

These computing advancements will driving a whole new class of use cases, according to Hotard, and enterprises will now be able to unlock insights better and faster than before, especially given the data explosion they’re currently facing.

The most notable part of this evolution might be the AI implications, Hotard added.

“To build true intelligence, not effectively a machine that learns data and then can only handle that data, but to build true intelligence where you’ve got something that can continue to learn and understand and grow and evolve, you need this class of system,” he concluded.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE