In a study we recently completed with the National Center of Manufacturing Sciences, we found a huge disconnect between large and small companies’ use of HPC among U.S. manufacturers — one of the most mature HPC-using industries. The vast majority of U.S. manufacturers have fewer than 100 employees; fewer than 10% of those use any HPC. (Executive summary at: http://www.intersect360.com/industry/research.php?id=35.) This statistic is representative of the missed opportunity in bringing modeling and simulation capabilities to the volume market. What we’ve found is that the popular term “missing middle” is a misnomer. For the commercial sector especially, it’s really everything but the top that is missing.

If HPC is the top 5% of computing capability (or similar time-relative metric), then it would seem the question of “why isn’t HPC growing?” is answered before we start. Given the reference to 1984/Cray XMP vs. 2010/IBM FLOPS ratings, it seems like this is the kind of metric being used.

If you look at HPC as some fixed capability (some kind of metric that doesn’t change each year) — e.g. the ability to simulate a car crash — then costs have dropped, many areas of “access” have improved and HPC has grown dramatically. (Though I’d agree that “access” in the sense of skills/knowledge still has a way to go)