Perspectives from ISC

Traditional HPC architectures have typically been designed to address either homogenous workloads (such as physics-based modeling and simulation) with similar, and perhaps more important, fixed, compute, memory, and I/O requirements or, more recently, heterogenous workloads with a diverse range of compute, memory, and I/O requirements. Most HPC data center planners and operators, however, don't have the luxury of focusing on one main type of workload; they typically must support many HPC users and their associated workloads sporting a wide range of compute, memory, and I/O profiles. Architectures have typically consisted of a fixed set of resources, resulting in an underutilized system with expensive elements often sitting idle for long periods of time. One approach being explored to increase system utilization by exposing resources that would otherwise sit idle to appropriately matched jobs waiting in a queue is via composable systems.

This report looks at the European approach to developing both exascale computers and an indigenous, self-sufficient HPC supply chain in Europe. In recent years the EU and its Member States, along with countries including China, Japan, and the United States, have increasingly recognized the strategic importance of investing more heavily in supercomputing to accelerate scientific and industrial innovation.