High performance computing has come a long way from the days of $20M computers that filled rooms with blinking equipment carefully tended by PhD’s in white coats. The same forces that have driven desktop computer costs down from $5,000 apiece to just a few hundred dollars have radically transformed high performance computing. There are still supercomputers around that cost tens of millions of dollars, but for the most part they are built out of a lot of the same parts that you find on your desk. The reason this is good news for the rest of the world is that you can now build smaller versions of those big monsters for a few tens of thousands of dollars.
Using a high performance computer in your business is very do-able, and depending upon your level of comfort with IT you can even choose to do it all yourself. But, you don’t have to. As prices have come down technology companies have recognized that there are many businesses out there who will want to exploit the power of HPC in their own business but lack the time, resources, people, or just the desire to do it all themselves (after all, you’re in business to do what you do, not build computers!). And you have a pretty big selection of help available to you; all of the major IT vendors are lining up HPC solutions and services designed specifically to help bring this technology into businesses that have never used it before.
Further reading: from here you may want to continue Basic Training, or read about the kinds of HPC — from a DIY cluster to rented cycles at someone else’s facility — available for your business.
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