What is high performance computing?
On Wednesday I was at a meeting to discuss the National Platforms program which is part of the new CFI programs. Here are the details or the proposed program:
National Platforms Fund (NPF)
The National Platforms Fund provides generic research infrastructure, resources, services, and facilities that serve the needs of many research subjects and disciplines, and that require periodic reinvestments because of the nature of the technologies. The Fund is established to deal first with High Performance Computing, but may be applicable in other cases.
Working with the HPC folks raises interesting questions about what HPC is and whether it has applications in the Humanities.
Here are some of the questions and issues I have:
- What is HPC? Is it just faster computing or is there a categorical difference between an HPC system and others? Is it an architecture issue or a matter of optimization for certain types of problems?
One place to start is the Wikipedia article High-performance computing. HPC is also identified as a one of the List of open problems in computer science.
- What is the culture of HPC? Regardless of the definition of high performance computing, there is a culture around HPC (and supercomputing) – what do we know about this culture? Do supercomputer centres and consortia typically arise in certain disciplines that have HPC needs and what are those disciplines? For that matter, does the HPC community have its own features – for example the competition for rankings?
An example of the culture is the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites where the University of Sherbrooke is ranked at 40 (as of June 2005.)
- Are there HPC applications in the humanities? Does it matter? Do we need to position high-end humanities computing as HPC in order to align it with institutional (and government) priorities?
There is an article in Supercomputing Online on what is happening at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Events kick off Center for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science. The NCSA and UIUC are setting up a centre that will support collaboration including HPC and the humanities, arts and social sciences. Another interesting intervention is by Bill Wulf of the National Academies on High Performance Computing to Congress, where he writes, “the humanities offer a new opportunity to explore how information technology can be employed in fundamentally different ways that will provide fresh insights and enrich research in other applications. Effectively representing and enhancing an understanding of the human record presents an interesting challenge to information technology research.”