HPC User Site Census: Engineering 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 engineering applications named in the Site Census survey. Our goal in this analysis is to provide an overview
of the engineering 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 

Engineering is one of the primary use cases for HPC. In this report, we examine multiple categories of engineering applications, including structural
analysis, electronic design automation (EDA), and other general engineering applications. These engineering categories together represent 324 (13.1%)
of total application mentions in our Site Census survey.

Engineering is an ISV-dominated field. ISV applications represent 263 of the 324 specified business applications in the survey—81.2% of the total.
This proportion is highest among commercial HPC users, where it reached 87.0%, but it was also over 70% among both academic and government respondents.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Methodology

Total Responses

Table 1: HPC User Site Census Responses for Application Analysis

HPC APPLICATION USAGE: ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS

Figure 1: HPC User Site Census Applications by Domain

Figure 2: Source of Engineering Applications (Open-Source, In-House, ISV) by Economic Sector

Table 2: Named Engineering Applications in HPC User Site Census Survey

Table 3: Suppliers of Named Engineering Applications in HPC User Site Census Survey

INTERSECT360 RESEARCH ANALYSIS