Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is accelerating mainstream enterprise adoption of high performance computing (HPC) by offering its HPC cloud services through its GreenLake IT-as-a-service offering.

The HPC cloud services provide users with an agile, elastic, pay-per-use cloud experience. Any enterprise can tackle demanding compute and data-intensive workloads, to power artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning initiatives, speed time to insight, and create products and experiences through a flexible as-a-service platform that can be run on-premises or in a colocation facility.

The offering removes the complexity and cost associated with traditional HPC deployments by delivering fully managed, pre-bundled services based on purpose-built HPC systems, software, storage and networking that come in small, medium or large options. Users can order these through a self-service portal with point-and-click functions to choose the right configuration for their workload needs and receive services to get started quickly.

This means any enterprise can run demanding workloads with managed, pre-bundled HPC cloud services to operate in any data centre or colocation environment

“The massive growth in data, along with artificial intelligence and high performance analytics, is driving an increased need for HPC in enterprises of all sizes, from the Fortune 500 to start-ups,” said Peter Ungaro, senior vice president at HPE. “We are transforming the market by delivering industry-leading HPC in simplified, pre-configured services that control costs and improve governance, scalability and agility through GreenLake. These HPC cloud services enable any enterprise to access the most powerful HPC and AI capabilities and unlock greater insights that will power their ability to advance critical research and achieve bold customer outcomes.”

HPC provides massive computing power, along with modelling and simulation capabilities, to turn complex data into digital models that help researchers and engineers understand what something will look like and perform in the real world. HPC also provides performance to run AI and analytics to increase predictability. These combined capabilities are used to solve problems from vaccine discovery and weather forecasting to improving designs of cars, planes and even personal and consumer products such as shampoo and laundry detergent.

However, traditional deployment and management of HPC systems is costly, complex and resource-intensive. Top concerns involve system costs, operational costs related to power and cooling, and lack of skilled HPC technical staff.

HPE says it is simplifying this experience by speeding up deployment of HPC projects by up 75% and reducing capital expenditures by up to 40% by offering its HPC portfolio through GreenLake cloud services. Enterprises can deploy these services in any data centre environment, whether on-premises in their own enterprise or in a colocation facility, and gain managed services that allow them to pay for only what they use, empowering them to focus on running their projects to increase time-to-insight and accelerate innovation.

HPE will initially offer an HPC service based on HPE Apollo systems, combined with storage and networking technologies, which are purpose-built for running modelling and simulation workloads. The service also leverages HPC software for workload management, support for HPC-specific containers and orchestration, and cluster management and monitoring. HPE plans to expand the rest of its HPC portfolio to as-a-service offerings in the future.

As part of the offering, users will gain the following features to manage, deploy and control costs for their HPC services:

• GreenLake Central offers a software platform for users to manage and optimise their HPC services.
• Self-service dashboard enables users to run and manage HPC clusters on their own, without disrupting workloads, through a point-and-click function.
• Consumption analytics provide at-a-glance analytics of usage and cost based on metering through GreenLake.
• HPC, AI and app services standardise and package HPC workloads into containers, making it easier to modernise, transfer and access data. The factory process is leveraged by experts to move applications quickly into a container platform as needed.

Zenseact, a software developer for autonomous driving in Sweden and China, uses HPE’s HPC as-a-service through GreenLake for modelling and simulation capabilities to analyse the hundreds of petabytes of data it generates globally from its network of test vehicles and software development centres. This helps fuel Zenseact’s mission to model and simulate autonomous driving experiences to develop next-generation software to support driver safety.

“At Zenseact, our mission is to improve advanced driver-assisted systems and automated driving to create robust and flexible solutions that will push the envelope in technological innovation and transform the driving experience,” said Robert Tapper, CIO at Zenseact. “By deploying HPE’s high performance computing as-a-service with GreenLake, we are addressing our mission by performing 10,000 simulations per second, based on driving data from our test cars, to accelerate insights for designing software to enable safe autonomous vehicles.”

Other enterprise use case examples include:

• Building safer cars: Car manufacturers can model and test vehicle functions to improve designs, from simulating effectiveness of rubber types in tyres to performing crash simulations to test impact for potential injuries to drivers and passengers.
• Manufacturing with sustainable materials: Simulation is used to discover new materials for additional, sustainable options for aluminium and plastic packaging to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
• Finance markets: Financial analysts can predict critical stock trends and trade, and even improve risk management, in milliseconds in a fast-paced financial services environment where quick and accurate insight is critical.
• Drug treatment: Scientists at research labs and pharmaceutical companies can perform complex simulations to understand biological and chemical interactions that can lead to new drug therapies for curing diseases.
• Oil and gas exploration: Performing simulations, combined with dedicated seismic analytics, can increase discovery and accuracy of oil reservoirs while reducing overall exploration safety risks and costs by identifying when and where to drill for oil.

Users can free up their own real estate by choosing to deploy their HPC systems and equipment in a colocation facility and use their services remotely through GreenLake. HPE colocation partners for HPC deployments, which provide scalable, energy-efficient data centres, include AtNorth (formerly Advania Data Center), CyrusOne and ScaleMatrix.

HPE collaborates with independent software vendors such as Activeeon, Ansys, Core Scientific and Uber Cloud to optimise software application needs from automation, AI, analytics and blockchain to computer-aided engineering and computer-aided design that are critical to improving time-to-market for manufacturing, engineering and product design.

GreenLake cloud services provide a foundation to drive digital transformation through an elastic as-a-service platform that can run on-premises, at the edge, or in a colocation facility. GreenLake combines the simplicity and agility of the cloud with the governance, compliance and visibility that comes with hybrid IT.

Initial pre-bundled offerings for GreenLake cloud services for HPC will be generally available in spring 2021 for users globally. HPE plans to expand these services to additional technologies, including Cray-based compute, software, storage and networking.