What is Advanced Computing?

It is a set of high-performance, high-processing computational and technological resources that facilitate cooperation, progress and knowledge sharing. It is centred on a supercomputing infrastructure and a range of computational models at the service of research and innovation; developed by high-value people with strong advanced computing skills; and needs the implementation of a public policy infostructure to bridge the gap between infrastructure and people in order to promote the creation of high-value services and software.

Computational models

  • HPC
  • HTC
  • Cloud computing
  • Quantum Computing

HPC - High Performance Computing

Each HPC architecture [1] consists of the following elements:

  1. A set ofcompute nodes operating together and temporarily dedicated to a single application, which together can execute at least 40 x 10^12 [[2]] strongly dependent floating-point operations each second, executed on generic, non-specialised microprocessors [[3]].
  2. A file system accessible from each compute node at a shared throughput of at least 40 Gbps [[4]] with multiple concurrent access flows [[5]] on each compute node.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPC[ 2] 40 Tera-FLOP [3 ] An example of a class of specialised processors is the GPU [4] 1Gbps= 1 Giga bit per second [5 ] Parallel file system , like Lustre or BeeGFS

HTC - High Throughput Computing

Each HTC architecture [1] consists of the following elements:

  1. A set of distributed [[2]] or concentratedcompute nodes, usually shared among several applications, in a virtualisation or containerisation mode.
  2. A file system accessible from each compute node.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-throughput_computing [2] Across multiple geographically distributed datacenters

Cloud computing

Each Cloud Computingarchitecture[1] consists of the following elements:

  1. A set ofcompute nodes shared by several users and applications, provided in a self-service system with maximum quotas, through a virtualisation software layer in cloud computing IaaS [[2]].
  2. The virtual servers (VM - Virtual Machines) provided will access the virtual disk through local devices , or by mounting a remote file system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing [ 2] See definition of cloud IaaS at https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-145/final

Quantum Computing

Quantum computing is among the most far-reaching and challenging technologies. Based on quantum bits that can be zero and one at the same time and instantaneous correlations between devices, a quantum computer acts as a massive parallel device with an exponentially large number of calculations that all occur at the same time. There are already many algorithms that invest in this computational modality, which will allow to solve problems that even the most powerful classical supercomputers would never solve or would take hundreds of years to solve. To find out more see the "Quantum manifesto ".