High performance computing (HPC) substantially improves computing performance and speed. It is no surprise organisations are increasingly opting for this emerging technology, given its capabilities to overcome the barriers seen in traditional PCs and processors. HPC systems can operate over one million times faster than typical desktop, laptop, or server setups. These superior speeds are further improved by the use of HPC accelerators, allowing organisations to rapidly process data at lower costs and with much lower latency.
Computing's latest research in this space, conducted in collaboration with Intel, finds only a fifth of organisations utilising HPC are also using accelerators, suggesting there is serious headway to be made in this area.
IT leaders using accelerators overwhelmingly recognise their benefits, with 67 per cent of organisations agreeing they have improved the efficiency of workloads, while over 90 per cent report accelerators have enabled or will enable new HPC use cases for their enterprise.
Delivering optimal performance depends on selecting the right processors and accelerators as well as ensuring the right hardware underpins them.
Taking advantage of built-in accelerators
In order to accommodate the massive processing power of HPC workloads, sizable memory bandwidth is required. Traditionally, this meant owning or leasing supercomputers to carry out HPC tasks. Thankfully, today HPC and accelerators are much more accessible and can be built into the Central Processing Unit (CPU).
Initial success of HPC is reflected in IT leaders' motivation to continue or increase their HPC utilisation - 97 per cent of respondents predict their use of HPC will increase or stay the same in the next two years.
This is important for enterprises needing consistent and reliable results. HPC use cases range from data analysis and AI inferencing, to simulating and modelling test scenarios. Consequently, HPC is often at the forefront of industry developments. When asked how accelerator usage has affected their organisation, respondents reported significant improvements to their response times, monitoring abilities, and performance.
Adopting HPC with built-in accelerators affords organisations the critical performance needed, enabling immediate and reliable computing power without the need to purchase new hardware or lease infrastructure. Organisations can save additional costs with this approach and concentrate on maximising their investments.
Actioning AI
The role of computing is paramount in applications like AI. For demanding calculations like this, dedicated accelerators enhance performance and scalability. Designed to maximise throughput for training and machine learning, while ensuring optimum efficiency, AI accelerators will scale across systems and workloads with high accuracy. AI accelerators achieve outstanding results in a much shorter time frame, optimising the execution of tasks as well as costs and organisational footprint.
Accelerators underpinning AI greatly expand the capabilities of organisations focused on areas such as data science, enhancing the speed of results and generated insights for very large quantities of data and complex sets. Deep learning is considerably benefitted by HPC accelerators and AI, specifically for large multidimensional data sets.
HPC, strengthened by the use of accelerators and applying AI, is making significant contributions to analytics, design, scientific visualisation and simulation, and much more. Accelerating possibilities, delivering on performance, ROI, and energy saving in the long-term are all top of mind for today's organisations.
Workloads have changed, meaning investing and employing the right hardware is vital in ensuring the benefits of HPC are fully realised. 44 per cent of organisations surveyed say HPC is having a transformative impact on their company, demonstrating the value in adoption. In a data-centric world, having a sound strategy that makes use of HPC and accelerators is critical in powering innovation and tackling today's challenges.
To learn more about Computing's research into accelerating your HPC strategy, please visit the hub.
This post is sponsored by Intel.
