Role of ‘supercomputers’ in key industries growing

High-performance computing (HPC), also called supercomputing, has made an enormous contribution to the world’s scientific, engineering and industrial competitiveness since its introduction in the 1960s.
“Without supercomputers, detecting today’s sophisticated cyber security breaches, insider threats and electronic fraud would be impractical,” said Abdulaziz Al-Helayyil, IDC regional director for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Al-Helayyil made the statement in an article entitled “High Performance Computing-- Ushering Business Transformation in Saudi Arabia.”
He said supercomputers expanded long ago beyond government and university research facilities and that they had made cars and planes much safer, more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly.
“They are crucial aids in discovering and extracting new sources of oil and gas, and for developing alternative energy sources,” he said.
He said supercomputers are also heavily relied on not only by automotive and aerospace manufacturers but also by industries ranging from financial services to medicine and health care, entertainment, consumer products, the weather community to predict severe storms and more recently Internet companies.
Al-Helayyil said that in the Middle East, many countries-- particularly Saudi Arabia-- have significantly increased their investment.
He said that there are quite a number of ways to go to reach the levels of global investments seen by other countries but regional leaders are beginning to see the importance of HPC when it comes to benefiting economies, ensuring the country’s security as well as medical research and educational development.
“Globally, it’s no surprise that the US leads the global HPC spending, followed by China, Japan and with Germany and France rounding up the five,” Al Helayyil said.
He said that some of the newer market drivers for HPC include higher security through more input data (fraud detection, counter-terrorism), smarter mathematical models and algorithms assisting in R & D, real-time and near real time requirements, used heavily in catching credit card fraud, on-the-fly patient diagnosis, counter-terrorism and insurance purposes.
He said that IDC, a prominent research firm, found that the government lab led MEA HPC Industry/Application Segment investment by almost double the next closest segment, with $53,268 million, followed by University/Academic with $28,958 million and Bio-Sciences with $26,341 million, a clear indication of regional government’s intent to invest heavily in HPC.
The head of Pentagon’s Cyber Command, Gen. Keith Alexander, estimate that cyber-attacks and intellectual property theft cost US companies $250 billion annually.
Separately, the threat of insider espionage can be a high-risk disaster for governments, specifically the military, where high-value targets can be compromised and classified information leaked.
“Fraud has been one of the leading causes of data exploitation for personal use. The FBI estimates that 10 percent of transactions in federal health care programs are fraudulent, costing more than $100 billion a year,” Al-Helayyil said.
He added that today, “fraud is detected after the fact and the government recovers only about $5 billion a year. The government is conducting tests to evaluate multiple proposed solutions to this Big Data problem.”