There’s no question that hardware is going through a big shift right now. High-performance computing now faces a crossroads, as technologies such as the cloud have changed the game regarding supercomputing.

Supercomputing has evolved significantly from its early days in niche offerings to broader usage in enterprises globally. What comes next, especially given the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, poses many questions. What’s taking place in the space right now is the confluence of central processing units, graphics processing units and network interconnects from companies such as Broadcom Inc., along with faster storage, according to industry analyst Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio.

“Faster, bigger storage is all coming together with more data and AI to really drive a lot of innovations,” Vellante said.

The conversation around what comes next will be underway during theCUBE’s coverage of this year’s ISC High Performance event, which runs from May 22-24. During the event, Vellante and John Furrier will discuss how the realm of HPC is being reinvented and what market developments are driving the need for innovation. (* Disclosure below.)

Vast amounts of data at high speeds

Traditionally thought of as involving giant supercomputers for particular research fields, HPC today has evolved and now involves usage in healthcare, government, manufacturing and fintech. The global market size was valued at $48.5 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.5% from 2023 to 2030.

“The growing demand for high-efficiency computing, advancements in virtualization, continued diversification and expansion of the IT industry and the increasing preference for hybrid HPC solutions are the factors that are expected to drive the growth,” according to a  recent report from Grand View Research Inc.

In November, theCUBE was on site at The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis event, also known as SC22, which was similarly focused on the present and future of HPC. After day one at that event, theCUBE co-host Savannah Peterson said it was exciting to witness what AI trends were finding their footing in business use cases, adding that hype around AI and quantum was high a decade ago, but the hardware wasn’t ready to scale to power them.

“Now, we’ve got air cooling, we’ve got liquid cooling, we’ve got multiple GPUs,” Peterson said. “Dell Technologies Inc. was showing me all eight of theirs that they put in their beautiful million-dollar piece of equipment, which is extremely impressive for folks to run complex calculations.”

TheCUBE will follow the thread from SC22 into this year’s ISC, which, in turn, will thread into SC23.

The changing landscape for storage

During SC22, Dell unveiled its PowerEdge XE9680 system, billed as the first system with eight Nvidia Corp. GPUs interconnected with Nvidia’s NVLink. It was designed to meet growing customer demand on large-scale AI and HPC initiatives, according to Dell.

Traditionally, large-scale HPC has been dominated by parallel file systems, but there are open questions as to whether that will continue. In addition, topics of conversation during ISC High Performance will likely center around what technologies are changing in these systems to increase its performance and what the alternatives to parallel file systems are likely to be.

Other problems are also likely to be subjects of big conversation. When it comes to dictating HPC product specifications at the very high end, the scientific computing world lacks the financial leverage to do so, according to Daniel Reed, presidential professor in computational science at the University of Utah.

“The leading edge HPC market is too small, the procurements are too infrequent, the funding is too small and the financial risk to vendors is too high, while the size and scale of the hyperscaler and deep learning markets are too large to ignore,” he said in an ISC keynote abstract. “The message is clear. We must again adapt, just as we did during the transitions from vector systems and shared memory parallel processors.”

TheCUBE will be on-site at the ISC High Performance event to capture all the breaking news and real-time analysis. You can follow theCUBE’s wall-to-wall coverage for firsthand insights throughout the event.

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of the ISC High Performance event from May 22-24. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of the ISC High Performance event, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

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

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

Stay tuned for theCUBE’s complete guest list during the ISC High Performance event here.

(* Disclosure: TTheCUBE is a paid media partner for the ISC High Performance 2023 event. Dell Technologies Inc. and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE