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The economics (and politics) of the HPC ecosystem always feels a bit murky and its impact on the broader computing landscape not as much as you would expect. Ex

The economics (and politics) of the HPC ecosystem always feels a bit murky and its impact on the broader computing landscape not as much as you would expect. Expensive, one-of-a-kind designs that push the envelope (and pressumably deliver what they are commissioned for) but are floating somewhere above what the rest of the world is using. What would a healthy EU HPC ecosystem look like? At some point there was some excitement about Beowulf clusters [1]. When building a new supercomputer, think, for example about making at least its main compute units more widely available (universities, startups, SME's etc). HPC Computing is arcane and to tap its potential in the post-Moore's law era it needs to get much more democratized and popular. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_cluster

AdamN 3y ago
There is also the benefit of all the people that get that experience and then bring it to trad-computing.
Someone 3y ago
> making at least its main compute units more widely available If they did, would anybody want them? Are those units competitive for smaller setups and the kind of jobs they run?
- KeplerBoy 3y ago
  Sure.. Plenty of Supercomputers are just A100s, which are also perfectly usable in a single DL workstation. * at least if they used pci-e
- nologic01 3y ago
  it would depend heavily on costs and tangible benefits versus e.g., renting something from cloud providers. its a new vista, its anybody's guess how things will look in five years, but when Intel's CEO is touting the era of the "AI PC" [1] their projection must be that a certain market will form around compute intensive local computing (largely prompted by the popularity of LLM/AI but that just one domain). on the second branch of your question, indeed a local "supercomputer piece" should have a sufficient number of CPU/GPU's to pack meaningful computational power. this way it would also require and enable the right kind of tooling and programming that scales to larger sizes. given that algorithms can enhance practically any existing application (productivity, games etc), this might be a case of "build it and they will come" [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/intel-ceo-get-ready-for-the-ai-pc https://www.pcmag.com/news/intel-ceo-get-ready-for-the-ai-pc
semi-extrinsic 3y ago
Direct quote from your link: "Since 2017, every system on the Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers has used Beowulf software methods and a Linux operating system." As for accessible by everyone: here is how you can apply for computing time via PRACE, if you work at an academic institution, a commercial company or a government entity located in Europe: https://prace-ri.eu/call/eurohpc-ju-call-for-proposals-for-regular-access-mode-2023-07-07-cutoff/ https://prace-ri.eu/call/eurohpc-ju-call-for-proposals-for-r... In addition to the very large machines that are covered by PRACE, typically there are national calls for access to "smaller" HPC resources, say up to a few million CPU-hours per year. The allocations on PRACE average around 30-40 million cpu-hours. What is explicitly NOT allowed on these machines is typically running jobs that use just a handful of cores. They've paid a lot of money for the fancy interconnect, amd they want to see it used.
- nologic01 3y ago
  Remote "cloud" style access is also interesting and important for various use-cases. But I was thinking more in terms of local compute capabilities. I.e. somebody actually packaging these new compute units into workstations / servers to be used by diverse entities.
blitzar 3y ago
> What would a healthy EU HPC ecosystem look like? It already exists, there are probably >100 HPC clusters spread throughout the EU in universities + the CERN cluster etc. > startups, SME's etc Why would we want to provide resources for a startup to waste compute resources to optimise advertising clicks? They can spend their VC cash at aws.
- nologic01 3y ago
  you (or rather the tax payer that pays your salary) would not "provide" anything. the concept is for non-government money sponsored entities to get access (by buying) substantially similar (but scaled down) architectures instead of spending their VC cash at aws. ultimately this is also better use of taxpayer money: diffusing technology more wider and educating people to make use of supercomputing technologies beyond the ivory towers
  - blitzar 3y ago
    The demand compute time within the existing users far outstrips the supply, by orders of magnitude, hence why more is being installed.

AdamN 3y ago

There is also the benefit of all the people that get that experience and then bring it to trad-computing.

Someone 3y ago

> making at least its main compute units more widely available If they did, would anybody want them? Are those units competitive for smaller setups and the kind of jobs they run?

KeplerBoy 3y ago
Sure.. Plenty of Supercomputers are just A100s, which are also perfectly usable in a single DL workstation. * at least if they used pci-e
nologic01 3y ago
it would depend heavily on costs and tangible benefits versus e.g., renting something from cloud providers. its a new vista, its anybody's guess how things will look in five years, but when Intel's CEO is touting the era of the "AI PC" [1] their projection must be that a certain market will form around compute intensive local computing (largely prompted by the popularity of LLM/AI but that just one domain). on the second branch of your question, indeed a local "supercomputer piece" should have a sufficient number of CPU/GPU's to pack meaningful computational power. this way it would also require and enable the right kind of tooling and programming that scales to larger sizes. given that algorithms can enhance practically any existing application (productivity, games etc), this might be a case of "build it and they will come" [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/intel-ceo-get-ready-for-the-ai-pc https://www.pcmag.com/news/intel-ceo-get-ready-for-the-ai-pc

semi-extrinsic 3y ago

Direct quote from your link: "Since 2017, every system on the Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers has used Beowulf software methods and a Linux operating system." As for accessible by everyone: here is how you can apply for computing time via PRACE, if you work at an academic institution, a commercial company or a government entity located in Europe: https://prace-ri.eu/call/eurohpc-ju-call-for-proposals-for-regular-access-mode-2023-07-07-cutoff/ https://prace-ri.eu/call/eurohpc-ju-call-for-proposals-for-r... In addition to the very large machines that are covered by PRACE, typically there are national calls for access to "smaller" HPC resources, say up to a few million CPU-hours per year. The allocations on PRACE average around 30-40 million cpu-hours. What is explicitly NOT allowed on these machines is typically running jobs that use just a handful of cores. They've paid a lot of money for the fancy interconnect, amd they want to see it used.

nologic01 3y ago
Remote "cloud" style access is also interesting and important for various use-cases. But I was thinking more in terms of local compute capabilities. I.e. somebody actually packaging these new compute units into workstations / servers to be used by diverse entities.

blitzar 3y ago

> What would a healthy EU HPC ecosystem look like? It already exists, there are probably >100 HPC clusters spread throughout the EU in universities + the CERN cluster etc. > startups, SME's etc Why would we want to provide resources for a startup to waste compute resources to optimise advertising clicks? They can spend their VC cash at aws.

nologic01 3y ago
you (or rather the tax payer that pays your salary) would not "provide" anything. the concept is for non-government money sponsored entities to get access (by buying) substantially similar (but scaled down) architectures instead of spending their VC cash at aws. ultimately this is also better use of taxpayer money: diffusing technology more wider and educating people to make use of supercomputing technologies beyond the ivory towers
- blitzar 3y ago
  The demand compute time within the existing users far outstrips the supply, by orders of magnitude, hence why more is being installed.