Supercomputing: Why Should We Care?
Professor of High Performance Computing Simon McIntosh-Smith tells use how we’re all benefitting from the power of supercomputers.
Supercomputers already affect our everyday lives, in subtle yet significant ways – forecasting hurricane paths, predicting climate change and making huge breakthroughs in cancer treatment. They’ve even been described as a ‘crystal ball’ we can use to predict the future… and, yes, maybe one day, they’ll figure out the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.
Yet outside of the scientific community, these monolithic machines aren’t as well understood as they deserve to be. To help shed some light on the subject, we spoke to our very own Professor Of High Performance Computing Simon McIntosh-Smith.
Simon picked up the Outstanding Leadership In HPC Award at the international supercomputing awards – SC18 – this month. He’s also leading a unique new supercomputing project called Isambard, as part of the GW4 Alliance, together with Cray Inc and the Met Office. The Isambard project is exploring the use of mobile technology in supercomputers, in order to build them at a fraction of the cost and make supercomputers more accessible for everyone.