Report: 5 Reasons US Government Agencies Should Increase HPC Investment

May 2, 2022

A new Hyperion Research opinion paper, sponsored by Dell Technologies and AMD, recommends that the US government increase its investment in high-performance computing (HPC), also known as supercomputing. The paper, titled “To Out-compute is to Out-compete: Competitive Threats and Opportunities Relative to US Government HPC Leadership,” outlines the benefits of HPC, examines recent trends, and forecasts future needs.

Included in the report are the following five reasons why US agencies urgently need to spend more on HPC:

1. Every dollar spent on HPC generates $507 in revenue.

As part of a separate project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, and the National Nuclear Security Administration, Hyperion Research has been tracking the return on investment (ROI) from HPC investments since 2013.

The numbers are startlingly high.

For every dollar invested in HPC, finance, manufacturing, life sciences, and transportation companies generates $504 in additional sales. Industrial firms see ROI nearly as high, generating an additional $452 in revenue for every dollar spent on supercomputing. And on average, those additional sales generate $38 in additional profit or cost savings.

2. HPC research saves lives.

Historically, government research that relies on HPC has helped save lives in a number of different ways, including the following:

  • By predicting severe weather, giving people time to evacuate or make other arrangements to mitigate the impact of disastrous storms.
  • By modeling nuclear accidents and other types of events that are difficult or undesirable to test, helping prevent and prepare for these types of situations.
  • By analyzing test and real-world data to help make cars, planes, and other vehicles safer.
  • By helping investigate and develop strategies to prevent criminal activity, including cybercrime.
  • By assisting in the development of military technologies that reduce military and civilian casualties.
  • By empowering the Department of Energy to secure its nuclear stockpile while also preventing nuclear proliferation and reducing nuclear threats around the world.
  • By enabling genetic and medical research that can help treat and prevent serious disease.

Most of these efforts continue today, and the government is also using HPC to investigate sustainable energy and other ways to combat global climate change.

3. Investing in HPC keeps the country strong.

Many US agencies are involved in public/private partnerships which allow innovations that arise out of government HPC projects to flow into the private sector, and vice versa. These efforts help the country maintain its dominant position in the global economy.

In addition, by purchasing HPC hardware manufacturer by US companies, the government boosts the US technology sector, which plays a huge role in the current economy. These investments help ensure that the country will maintain its position of strength worldwide.

The report also notes:

“Investments in high performance computing (HPC) are recognized globally as a fundamental tool for conducting R&D and advancing the economic competitiveness of nations. More countries than ever are increasing their spending on HPC infrastructure and critical associated areas, including AI, applications development and optimization, and workforce development and retention. Nations who do not adequately invest in HPC infrastructure and workforce development run the very real risk of weakening their national defense and falling behind economically.”

As outlined in the US Constitution, it is the government’s job to ” provide for the common defense, [and] promote the general Welfare.” Meeting those goals requires agencies to take steps which help keep the nation’s military and economy strong.

4. HPC enables scientific and academic innovation.

Many of the Nobel laureates in recent decades were recognized for achievements that relied on HPC. The report also notes that “In academia, HPC use has spread from its established strongholds in the physical sciences to the social sciences and the humanities.”

Government agencies and public universities that invest in HPC facilitate continued innovation across a wide range of disciplines.

5. Without adequate HPC investment, the United States runs the risk of falling behind other countries.

For more than 50 years, the US was the recognized leader in supercomputing. But now other countries are catching up, and on some measures, outpacing the United States.

The performance of the world’s fastest supercomputers is 70,000 times better today than it was just 20 years. If it wants to continue to keep pace, the US needs to continue investing in this area, not only in the leadership-class machines that grab headlines, but also in the smaller divisional- and departmental-class systems that can handle the growing volume of analytics workloads.

For more information

Read the full “To Out-compute is to Out-compete: Competitive Threats and Opportunities Relative to US Government HPC Leadership” paper. Visit dell.com/fed and learn more about High Performance Computing at delltechnologies.com/hpc.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire