HPC – High Performance Computing

In the era of digitization, HPC represents a precious resource for technological progress and corporate growth, and has the potential to revolutionize entire sectors, accelerating innovation and improving our understanding of the world.
High-performance computing indeed allows enormous quantities of data to be processed and complex computational problems to be solved in incredibly short times. This is possible thanks to powerful hardware infrastructure including server clusters, graphics processing units (GPUs), and specialized architectures, which exceed the computing capacity limits of traditional computers, opening up the way to new scientific and industrial frontiers.

Supercomputers are important R&D accelerators: their high processing and modelling capacities allow the timeframes and costs associated with these activities to be reduced. Supercomputers will also become ever-more crucial in the industrial and manufacturing fields, in light of the reconfiguration of global value chains, allowing for the development of prototypes and simulation of processes and models which increase efficiency and reduce costs, with positive impacts on multi-factor productivity, which is the Achille’s heel of growth in Italy. Finally, supercomputer infrastructure will generate benefits for the areas where it is based, leading to the creation of fully fledged data economy hubs, able to attract companies and talent at the national and international level.

HPC allows companies to analyze large quantities of information in real time. This translates to better informed and more timely decision-making, in other words to a strategic competitive advantage within sectors such as commerce, finance or market research.

The Benefits of HPC for Companies: Use Cases and Fields of Application

High Performance Computing offers great benefits to the business players who decide to adopt this technology. In particular, the greatest benefits can be obtained by:

• Organizations able to fully embrace the digital transformation paradigm, through major innovation in their business models
• Players able to benefit from the Data Economy and the use of big data to improve processes and models, carry out R&D activities, innovate in terms of products, and offer services with greater added value
• Sectors and companies for which forecasting capacity and modelling at all levels are critical, including: lowering risks due to uncertainty (developing pharmaceuticals and molecules …), reducing costs (e.g. predictive maintenance in manufacturing …), the effectiveness of the R&D phase (e.g. speed and minimizing risks associated with the prototyping phase in the automotive industry, in aerospace …)

• All businesses for which cybersecurity plays a key role Data security and preventing or mitigating cyber attacks will indeed require ever-greater computing and processing capacity to deal with ever-more sophisticated attacks (banking, insurance sectors etc.)

In the research by The European House – Ambrosetti and Lutech Group carried out for the decision makers of industry and the economy, concrete and strategic use cases are further developed, including:

• In manufacturing companies which require significant reorganization of production systems involving real-time monitoring of the supply chains and management of clients in a logic of progressive servitization
• In the Automotive sector, supercomputers are used to develop new vehicle/component models (e.g. engines). Making use of virtualization of the design phases allows the engineers to accelerate development timeframes and rapidly test innovative solutions
• In the Life Sciences field, the digital models enabled by HPC allow the diagnosis and management of illnesses and conditions to be improved, with benefits for the entire health system (reduced costs) and for patients (improved diagnoses). HPC systems are used to develop new drugs and in the human genome mapping process
• In Meteorology and Seismology it is allowing a huge step forwards in data analysis and modelling of future scenarios, minimizing the risk of error

The Positive Impact of HPC in Terms of Profitability, Productivity and Jobs

Discover the The European House – Ambrosetti and Lutech Group’s paper on HPC technology, which is capable of revolutionizing entire sectors and accelerating innovation

The development of technologies relating to the High Performance Computing model creates positive impacts linked to the application of high computing capacities in various industrial, innovation, and service sectors, all aimed at implementing fully-fledged new business models connected to the Data Economy:

• Reduction in R&D, design and prototyping costs and timeframes
• Reduction in operating and maintenance costs
• Reduction in costs linked to cyber attacks
• Revision and streamlining of the set of operational and organizational models
• Creation of new products and technologies and greater, faster innovation capacities
• Greater quality of products created

In all cases, moreover, the adoption of HPC solutions has required the development and activation of qualified professional figures, both in terms of upskilling of their workforce and in the creation of new, highly specialized positions, such as engineers and data scientists with parallel computing skills and expertise.