Measuring and Assessing the Value and Scientific ROI of NERSC’s Leadership Computing in Advancing Science

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 HPC market is a dynamic environment from just about every perspective. Whether it be technology, business engagements and partnerships, or datacenter upgrade plans, there is rarely a dull moment. The first half of 2021 was no exception. This report provides HPC storage-related highlights and analysis of notable activity that occurred within the global HPC community over the past six months across several fronts including: