Dossier High Performance Computing
High Performance Computing (HPC) is all about doing extremely large computations in the shortest possible time. The ultimate goal of HPC is to compute things that today take too much computing time or require too much memory (see e.g. the Grand Challenges, which is some sort of holy grail for HPC). But the same methods and techniques are used to make more conventional computations faster. Or to do much more accurate computations in the same amount of time.
Parallel Computing
High Performance Computing almost always involves parallel computing. No longer are higher computing speeds achieved by increasing the clock frequency of the processor. Instead, higher performance is now almost exclusively achieved by performing multiple computations simultaneously (in parallel). This requires a different way of thinking on the part of software developers. Read more>>
Impressive applications
Computations that were simply impossible only ten years ago are now performed on a regular basis for a range of applications. Not only for scienitific discovery, but for industrial purposes as well. In this section, you will find short descriptions of a number of impressive applications. VORtech has worked on some of them. Read more>>
Blogs en news sites
The field of High Performance Computing is constantly changing. A number of sites are worth checking out regularly to stay in touch. Read more>>
Further reading
A nice overview of the history of High Performance Computing in the Netherlands can be found in a book called Rekenmeesters that was recently published by the academic computing centre SARA in Amsterdam.