Visions

High performance computing

Explore the possible impact of high performance computing across a wide range of applications, from simulation or healthcare, to fintech or engineering.

What is this?

The map of high performance computing (HPC) is intended to stimulate discussion about what HPC capable of and where it might be heading in future.

There are five key categories of applications: Modelling & Simulation, Healthcare & Medicine, Security, Fintech and Materials, Manufacturing & Engineering. Previously, data was a separate subset, however we removed it as it was integral to the other categories.

The entries are all largely tech-push of course. In the real world, you’d need to overlay things like energy, security, privacy, regulation and human psychology to get a clearer picture of what’s next, but it’s a start.

The primary audience is the global HPC community, but hopefully, it will appeal to anyone interested in computing, Big Data, predictive analytics and perhaps machine learning and AI.

The exciting category to our collective mind at Tech Foresight is simulation and modelling. It brings up ethical and even philosophical questions about how simulations impact reality. For example, if you have data that suggests something will happen, what level of certainty would you require to then act and where is free will and human agency in all this?