Inferencing in an HPC/Advanced Computing Environment, Application Needs Must Be Well Understood

The application software landscape is quickly evolving along with HPC workloads. Independent software vendor (ISV) applications, as opposed to open-source or home-grown, have traditionally been considered the gold standard as the source for many HPC applications and were frequently cited as HPC users' top applications. While ISV revenues continue to rise, open-source application use is growing as well. Although HPC users can be reluctant to change the applications used at their site, developments such as the onset of AI, new types of hardware, and the cloud have spurred many users to explore new applications they may not have considered otherwise. Overall, the HPC application software landscape is rapidly developing in tandem with new HPC infrastructure and use cases.

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) recently hosted its 104th Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland with the theme of "Living in a Changing Environment". The event consisted of 47 meetings and symposia on various topics involving the science, policy, and technology of climate change, oceanography, and meteorology. Among these was the 10th Annual Symposium on High Performance Computing (HPC) for Weather, Water, and Climate. HPC is considered essential to the efforts of weather, water, and climate organizations worldwide to provide accurate forecasts and advance scientific understanding of Earth's systems. A panel discussion including David Michaud (NWS), Laurie Carriere (NASA), Thomas Hauser (NCAR), Frank Indiviglio (NOAA), and Tiago Quintino (ECMWF) shed light on the shared challenges and opportunities faced by these organizations in leveraging HPC for weather prediction and climate modeling.