Earl Joseph
CEO
Hyperion Research

Earl Joseph has thirty-four years of experience in the computer industry with a focus on technical computing and high performance computing. For years, he led IDC’s HPC research group, the preeminent “keeper of the notes” for the HPC community until purchasing the group in January after it was spun out as Hyperion Research as a condition of the IDC sale to Chinese investors. Joseph founded and ran the highly successful HPC User Forum (www.hpcuserforum.com). He has lead marketing and strategic planning functions for four major U.S. corporations, including managing divisional budgets in excess of $125 million. He has won an international anti-dumping case on supercomputers. Joseph conducted research and recommendations that lead to the President’s proposing a renewed emphasis on supercomputing in his 2006 state of the union address. He also led the market research, positioning and global rollout campaigns for multiple supercomputer products. Joseph earned his Ph.D. in the strategic management of high technology companies from the University of Minnesota.

HPCwire: Roughly a year ago IDC’s HPC research group was spun out as Hyperion Research as condition of the sale of the rest of IDC to a China group. Since then, Hyperion has been searching for a new owner. Surprise – or perhaps not – Earl Joseph, the long-time leader of the IDC group purchased Hyperion as a sole proprietorship in January. That was a gutsy move Earl. What can we expect going forward? How will the scope of what Hyperion covers and the scope of its services offered change? Give us a glimpse into your vision for Hyperion. 

Earl Joseph: We are excited about the new opportunities to research the HPC and emerging technologies space in order to help our clients better understand what is happening and likely to happen in the future. We are continuing all the research and services as before, plus adding more in the quantum computing, cloud computing and high-end cyber security. We are very thankful to IDC and the US government for setting up our operational framework.

HPCwire: What good is interviewing a premiere analyst if you can’t ask about the future. Few observers have your front row seat on the evolving HPC world. What’s next? AI dominates the current buzz. Enterprise adoption of HPC writ large is another, while quantum and neuromorphic computing percolate in the distance. Briefly, give us your take on the important changes at work on the HPC landscape.

The merging of big data and HPC is still just getting underway, and is creating so many new approaches and ideas. Next is the addition of AI/ML/DL into the traditional modeling and simulation areas, quickly followed by entirely new ways of solving problems with AI, especially in the medical areas. Exascale size systems, combined with big data, AI, and new technologies will likely fundamentally reshape many industries from manufacturing, to healthcare, to banking and education. Can you imagine when a 10 year old student can do a Google search with an exascale system that is combined with big data and AI? Their teacher may give an overnight homework assignment like: search everything ever written and determine who had the most influence on Shakespeare, and create a new play in the same format, style and language. And then the next day, the homework assignment would be to model the evolution of insect DNA over time and project the likely evolution of what a house fly could look like in a million years.

HPCwire: What do you hope to see from the HPC community in the coming year?

2018 may be the year that Exascale designs are finally clarified enough to understand how we will actually build the systems. It will may also be the year that a critical new application is solved via DL or ML, that couldn’t previously be solved. I’m also hopeful that new global partnerships will emerge that will speed up the advancements in HPC and HPDA technologies. Hopefully we will see some strong examples of how to better program computers for “general purpose” ML and DL applications.

HPCwire: Outside of the professional sphere, what can you tell us about yourself – personal life, family, background, hobbies, etc.? Is there anything about you your colleagues might be surprised to learn?

I’m married, and have a number of hobbies including home & auto repair. I have built two cars over the years from the ground up, and one can do 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds.

Antonio Neri HPE	Bob Picciano IBM	Brett Tanzer Microsoft
Dan Stanzione TACC	Diane Bryant Google	Doug Kothe ECP
Earl Joseph Hyperion	Frederick Kohout Cray	Ian Colle Amazon
Jysoo Lee KAUST	Marc Hamilton NVIDIA	Ralph McEldowney DoD
Rick Stevens ANL	Scott Aylor AMD	Trish Damkroger Intel