HPC User Site Census: Finance Applications

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Intersect360 Research surveyed the High Performance Computing (HPC) user community to complete its eleventh Site Census study. The study is a look at their
current computer system installations, storage systems, networks, middleware, and application software supporting these computer installations.

This report provides a detailed examination of finance and economics applications named in the Site Census survey. Our goal in this analysis
is to provide an overview of the finance applications space, including the breadth of applications and those that are most commonly used.

Our Site Census survey results can be found in many reports, including the following:

  • HPC System Configurations and Technologies
  • HPC System Vendors Installed
  • HPC Storage Configurations and Technologies
  • HPC Storage Vendors Installed
  • HPC Networking Technologies
  • HPC Processing Technologies (Including Accelerators)
  • HPC Operating System Installations
  • HPC Middleware and Tool Installations
  • HPC Application Installations (segmented into application domains):

    • Biosciences
    • Business: Business intelligence, analytics, pattern recognition, ERP, CRM, security, complex event processing, general business
    • Chemistry
    • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
    • Engineering: Structural analysis, electronic design automation (EDA), general engineering
    • Finance and economics
    • Geophysics
    • Physics
    • Scientific research
    • Visualization and image analysis
    • Weather modeling, climate modeling, environment modeling 

Financial services is one of the largest commercial vertical markets in consumption of HPC products and services, by spending. Despite this prevalence,
it is a lightly reported application segment in our annual Site Census survey. Economic or financial analysis applications represent only 1.9% of the
2,466 application mentions in our most recent survey analysis. The relative lack of financial applications mentioned in the survey is attributable
to two main factors. First is the tendency of financial services organizations to be secretive. The second reason is that most financial applications
are written in-house. About two-thirds of finance application mentions in our Site Census survey were written in-house—the second-highest proportion
of in-house development in any HPC application domain, after scientific research.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Methodology

Total Responses

Table 1: HPC User Site Census Responses for Application Analysis

HPC APPLICATION USAGE: FINANCE APPLICATIONS

Figure 1: HPC User Site Census Applications by Domain

Figure 2: Source of Finance Applications (Open-Source, In-House, ISV)

Risk Management

Trading

Pricing and Valuation

Business and Economic Analytics

INTERSECT360 RESEARCH ANALYSIS