HPE Discover Barcelona: What’s the business benefit of supercomputers?
With potential in fields such as AI to scientific modelling, global interest in supercomputers continues to rise


HPE’s annual European conference took place this week in Barcelona and the company’s focus is still firmly on AI. This is bolstered by its supercomputing credentials – El Capitan, the latest supercomputer to come online in the US, was awarded the title of fastest supercomputer just a day before the conference kicked off.
This episode, Jane sits down with Gerald Kleyn, vice president of customer solutions for HPC and AI at Hewlett Packard Enterprise at HPE Discover Barcelona 2024 to discuss what the real-world impact of these high-performance machines is and whether they hold any benefits for the average IT department.
Highlights
“It's going to be important for countries to maintain and develop their supercomputing capabilities to ensure that their researchers have access to the latest technologies so that they can make discoveries even faster. If you think about the speed of innovation and how it's accelerated … those that don't invest, they're going to be left behind.”
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“[HPC techniques are] becoming more and more relevant to more and more enterprises, especially as the generative AI workload has started to come to bear … those systems [are] very different than a traditional IT approach, where you're deploying microservices across an entire fleet of systems or virtual machines, trying to get the most out of your operation from an efficiency perspective.”
“We're doing a lot of work to optimize that (water) usage and reduce it as much as we can … we know that there's a future where we've got a responsibility to be as sustainable as possible, and we continue to invest in that.”
Footnotes
- What is HPC really for?
- AI’s thirsty secret
- Inside Lumi, one of the world’s greenest supercomputers
- HPE’s AI and supercomputing journey continues with new Cray and Slingshot hardware
- El Capitan powers up, becomes fastest supercomputer in the world
- HPE Discover Barcelona 2024: All the news and updates live
- Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful and sustainable supercomputer, is now up and running
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Jane McCallion is Managing Editor of ITPro and ChannelPro, specializing in data centers, enterprise IT infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Before becoming Managing Editor, she held the role of Deputy Editor and, prior to that, Features Editor, managing a pool of freelance and internal writers, while continuing to specialize in enterprise IT infrastructure, and business strategy.
Prior to joining ITPro, Jane was a freelance business journalist writing as both Jane McCallion and Jane Bordenave for titles such as European CEO, World Finance, and Business Excellence Magazine.
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