SRII Conference Panel Session: HPC as a Service – Key to Mainstream HPC or Wishful Thinking? 

At the next SRII Conference in San Jose July 24-27, a panel on “HPC as a Service – Key to Mainstream HPC or Wishful Thinking?” has been organized by HPC veteran Wolfgang Gentzsch. The Service Research and Innovation Institute (SRII, www.thesrii.org) is a professional organization led by major ICT companies in close partnership with research organizations, academia and government from around the world. The SRII mission is to drive innovation for "IT-Enabled Services" at the global level. The Annual SRII Global Conference is a unique forum for researchers to share their work on all of the key areas of IT-Enabled Services connecting the Science & Engineering of Services to major verticals such as health care, finance, telecom, retail, education, government, and energy, to name a few.

The panel on “HPC as a Service – Key to Mainstream HPC or Wishful Thinking?” will bring together two major recent HPC trends in the context of HPC services: HPC Cloud services a la Amazon EC2, Nimbis Services, SGI Cyclone, Penguin on Demand, and Fujitsu Technical Cloud; and Digital Manufacturing for Small and Medium Enterprises (some call this group the ‘missing middle’).  Many of these SMEs need HPC, but most of them are “HPCing” still on their workstations; or they are not yet fully aware of HPC nor of its benefits; or classical HPC is too complicated and complex for most of them; or they don’t have access to HPC expertise, and therefore only HPC as a service would make good sense to them.

For this panel, representatives of the major stakeholders of HPC as a Service have been invited:

- SME HPC end-user: Panelists Frank Ding, Engineering Analysis & Technical Computing Manager at Simpson Strong-Tie, a company creating structural products that help people build safer and stronger homes and buildings.

- HPC service and expertise provider: Panelist Ashok Krishnamurthy, interim co-executive director, Ohio Supercomputing Center, known e.g. for its Blue Collar initiative.

- Commercial HPC cloud provider: Panelist Robert Graybill, CEO and President, Nimbis Services, providing a Technical Computing Marketplace.

- Independent Software Vendor: Panelist Nick Appleyard, Vice President - Product Delivery (PDT) Operations Americas of CD-adapco, a software company interested in moving part of his business into the Cloud.

- Digital manufacturing market analyst: Panelist Addison Snell, CEO Intersect360, with research background in digital manufacturing, and

- Panel Chairman: Wolfgang Gentzsch, Executive HPC Consultant.

At the panel, at first, the five experts will briefly sketch their area of expertise, challenges and roadblocks, and provide possible solutions and recommendations. During the second half of the panel we will see a controversial discussion around important questions/topics, such as:

- Why should SMEs consider HPC? What are the game-changing benefits for them?

- What are currently the main roadblocks for adopting HPC in the SME community?

- Isn’t HPC far too complex to become a viable Service?

- How would the ideal HPC as a Service solution look like?

- What can WE do (as an SRII Special Interest Group) to support and speed-up adoption of HPC as a Service?

Our aim is to collect input from panelists and audience to develop a realistic and successful strategy for the SRII Special Interest Group on HPC Services http://www.thesrii.org/hpc-as-services. The panel session is scheduled on July 26.