HPC Applications In Danger of Decline

A "serious gap" exists between the needs of high-performance computing (HPC) users and the capabilities of ISV applications, according to a study by the U.S. government's Council on Competitiveness, presented at July's HPC Users Conference in Washington, D.C. Though most advanced HPC users are clamoring for servers that have thousands, or even tens of thousands, of processors, the survey found that few ISV applications today scale beyond 128 processors--and even fewer for many of the most-used applications.

Because typical ISVs focus more developmental energy on the broader and more lucrative market for desktop systems and smaller servers, HPC server revenue often is less than 5 percent of ISVs' overall sales, according to IDC. This shortfall could create a long-term problem for industries that require HPC technology, such as automotive, aerospace, pharmaceuticals and petroleum. The problem is not a lack of know-how, the authors contend, but a lack of resources and commitment from ISVs and the organizations that could help fund them.

Among the ISVs surveyed for the report who work with code that can scale, 37 percent don't plan to upgrade into the multiple hundreds of processors; 44 percent don't plan to scale into the thousands of processors; and 60 percent don't plan to scale to the tens of thousands. On the positive side, 83 percent are open to developing partnerships with other organizations, such as code developers, government labs and universities. The U.S. government is seen as the most attractive potential HPC partner despite potential bureaucratic headaches.

The report's authors warn that without a renewed commitment to developing HPC solutions--in the form of new private and public funding and refocused expertise--a variety of industries run the risk of being three to five years behind in their ability to use petascale systems once they're introduced.