Many scientific disciplines require supercomputers with fast interconnects for their complex simulations. Genomics is not presently one of them, we just need lo

Many scientific disciplines require supercomputers with fast interconnects for their complex simulations. Genomics is not presently one of them, we just need lots of compute time on fairly normal servers. The HPC does get used of course, but not for purely technical reasons. Genomics workloads should move to the cloud and be run at off-peak times to take advantage of cheaper pricing, but there are significant barriers to this as researchers can often get started on the HPC for free whereas cloud services require a purchasing card. Their cluster will also have some support and someone who can install software dependencies into the stack. (As a result most genomics software is really, really hard to get running on anything other than the author's institutions HPC and its unique set of installed packages.) Another barrier is just knowledge (it's hard to keep those people around in the current market) and university projects often have strange incentices due to central services (paid for out of general overheads) having no marginal cost.