IDC: SME HPC Path challenges cloud costs is a challenge

Cloud computing can boost the use of high-performance computing in small and medium-sized enterprises, but the road ahead remains difficult, IDC, an international data company, said at a recent international Supercomputing conference in Hamburg, Germany.

"Many small and medium-sized enterprises, such as auto manufacturing or aerospace industry components suppliers, or companies in the oil and gas or financial sectors, are experienced in using workstations but are confused about how to use them properly," said Earl Joseph, vice president of IDC's High-performance Systems project. Joseph says the task of such enterprises is still based on a single thread and a single processor.

As with first-time involvement in other areas, small and medium-sized Enterprises need to supplement the knowledge associated with High-performance computing. To this end, IDC says, companies should be able to understand products that solve their specific problems, rather than general HPC courses.

IDC also says potential users in small and medium-sized businesses need to start with help and explain to management the advantages of using high-performance computing.

IDC: Small and medium enterprise HPC inattention challenges public cloud costs

For small and medium enterprises, another related problem is the cost of software. "Users need to realize that HPC is not an upfront purchase of $25,000 worth of hardware, but a long-term business with a yearly system cost of $150,000," said Steve Conway, a deputy secretary of the IDC High Performance Computing division.

The main advantage of migrating to high-performance computing systems, says Mr Conway, is a noticeable increase in performance, which is much faster than previously. At that time, the original workstation may need to process a week of tasks in just a few hours to complete.

One of the ways that smaller businesses use HPC is cloud service applications. In general, cloud computing can help companies share part of the workload.

The application of high performance computing is now in its infancy. Earlier this year, Amazon's Web services department published a blog detailing how companies built "little Watson" into the cloud. IBM's "Watson" is a supercomputer that defeated the jeopardy guessing champion in the "brink of crisis" game. It is comprised of 90 IBM Power 750 servers and employs SUSE Linux Enterprise servers as its operating system.

Yet for most small and medium-sized companies, the high cost of cloud computing is daunting.

One way a cloud service provider lowers costs for small and medium businesses is that it does not use loops in the cloud after discounts are sold to HPC users, says Joseph. In that case, the popularity and landing of the cloud-based HPC will be achieved faster.

Cloud security is also a major concern for users. For some industries, the security of the cloud will never keep up with the need to run HPC applications. But Joseph believes that security is no longer a problem for most users, even if it is to be resolved soon.

"Another issue that needs to be noted is how to configure your cloud computing to make it work perfectly with HPC tasks and software stacks and variables," Joseph said. But I don't think the problem is a stumbling block to HPC applications. ”

In addition, in order for the HPC environment to be fully utilized, each part of the application stack should be optimized and run the appropriate application version.

(Responsible editor: admin)