HPCwire: NAG Embarks on a New Business Venture

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August 14, 2008

NAG Embarks on a New Business Venture

by John E. West, for HPCwire

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After more than three decades of operations building and selling numerical software, the Numerical Algorithms Group (or NAG as it's more commonly known) has started a new effort to teach the world how to program in parallel. Responding to changes in computing at both ends of the spectrum, the company is positioning itself as the place to go, not just for shrink-wrapped libraries, but also for education and expertise in how to program in parallel, and even for expert advice on how to buy, build and run your own supercomputer. HPCwire talked to Andrew Jones, vice-president of HPC business at NAG, on what he has in mind for this new business and how he sees the future of HPC and parallel programming shaping up.

But first, a little history. NAG is an odd organization. One of the company's most interesting characteristics is its longevity. In general computing, it is hard to list more than a handful of companies that are over 30 years old; but in HPC, it's nearly impossible. The roots of the company go back to 1970 when Brian Ford launched the NAG project as a collaboration between four universities in the UK: Nottingham, Manchester, Oxford and Birmingham. The Nottingham Algorithms Group changed its name to the Numerical Algorithms Group when it moved to Oxford in 1973, and was transformed into a company in 1976. NAG's first products were software for numerical computation and statistical analysis, and included the NAG Algol 60 and Fortran Libraries, released in 1971. Over the years the company added new libraries with support for new languages, its own compilers, and visualization tools. Today the company lists over 13 products in five families in its offering.

The second thing that is striking about NAG, and probably an important factor in its longevity, is that it is a non-profit company with several faces. The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd is the UK parent of an organization that includes two other operating companies: the Numerical Algorithms Group Inc. (US), and the Nihon Numerical Algorithms Group KK (Japan). Collectively, these are referred to as the NAG Group. It is formally designated as a company limited by guarantee, which is a British structure used primarily for non-profit organizations that require corporate status. The company has about 300 members, including contributors to the NAG libraries, current and past staff, and technical experts with a close connection to the company. The organization's technical excellence is driven by the spirit of collaboration that characterized the Nottingham Algorithm Group before incorporation, and this was a key factor to doing business as a nonprofit.

The company's most recent initiative is its new HPC Business, headed up for NAG by Andrew Jones in the UK. NAG describes his role as being to lead "the growth of the HPC business, developing strategic relationships within the HPC community -- including users, buyers, service providers, software developers and hardware suppliers." Jones's business is an HPC consultancy then, and like many changes in business direction, this one didn't arise out of a vacuum. "NAG's core is numerical software engineering," says Jones. "Consulting services, again based on NAG's core of numerical software engineering, have grown steadily over the last decade or so and, with the recent step up into large contracts like HECToR, are becoming comparable in size to our product-based business."

Jones and I exchanged a few emails on NAG's new venture, where we talked about the different aspects of the consultancy business.

When you look at who your customers are in the consultancy, are you thinking of the traditional high end of HPC or the mid to low end?

Our heritage and expertise covers both ends of the HPC spectrum. We have a strong position because the customer volume of our core products are at the low-to-mid range, giving us a clear understanding of the business issues at this scale, but we are actively involved in multiple HPC services at the Top20 scale too.

We already have good business assisting people with the move of commercial software to multicore systems. With our HPC business, we are looking to support those who have software that needs to adapt to manycores, either hundreds of multicore chips now or true manycores on a chip in the near future. This is where new algorithms and engineering issues such as scalability will reap rewards for performance and productivity.

[At the high end], NAG is part of the consortium that runs the UK's HECToR service. We provide the CSE element of the service -- 120 person-years over six years. We plan to focus on the larger end of the market, not just the Top20, but let's say "Top1 - Top1000 scale" rather than the 16-way systems. There are very few companies able to offer consulting in this end of the market backed by track record and volume of expertise.

In addition to computational science expertise, you are going to build out a business side to help with acquisition and management. Can you describe this aspect of the business?

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