Trends in High-Performance Computing

Perceptions in the High Performance Computing community of what HPC is really about have changed considerably in the last decade, with the emphasis having moved somewhat away from fast processing towards fast communications and distributed computing. What used to be referred to as ‘‘Supercomputing’’ became ‘‘High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC)’’ in the USA and ‘‘High Performnce Computing and Networking (HPCN)’’ in Europe. The emphasis is now moving towards ‘‘Distributed Computing’’ and parallel computing groups worldwide are re-inventing themselves as distributed computing groups and centres. High performance storage is being recognized as a possible next hurdle as storage device speeds are no longer in balance with processing and communications speeds.