Agility, Flexibility, and Security: The Value of Cloud in HPC

In today’s competitive business environment, companies face complex computing problems that require rapid resolution. These problems may be too complex to be handled by a single system or may require a long time to resolve. For businesses that need quick answers, every minute counts. For businesses determined to maintain a competitive advantage, it is impossible to allow problems to persist for weeks or months. To address these challenges, companies across a variety of industries, including semiconductor, life sciences, healthcare, and financial services, have adopted high-performance computing (HPC).

With HPC, businesses are taking advantage of the speed and performance that comes when powerful computers work together. This can be especially helpful as efforts to deploy AI at increasingly larger scales continue to grow. Analyzing massive amounts of data may feel impossible, but HPC helps businesses gain insights faster by using advanced computational resources that can perform many calculations quickly and in parallel. At the same time, HPC helps companies bring new products to market. Additionally, more and more companies are adopting it as it is used to perform risk management and more effectively.

The role of cloud in HPC

Most commonly, businesses running workloads that experience bursts of activity are finding that they are exceeding the compute capacity available on-premises. This is an example of how cloud computing can augment on-premises HPC, transforming a business’s approach to HPC with cloud resources. The cloud can help address spikes in demand during product development cycles that can last from short to long periods of time, giving organizations around-the-clock access to resources and capabilities they may not otherwise need. Companies using HPC in the cloud benefit from greater flexibility, greater scalability, greater agility, and greater cost efficiency.

Cadence uses IBM Cloud HPC.

Cadence is a global innovator in electronic design automation (EDA) with more than 30 years of computing software experience. It has helped companies around the world design electronic products, including chips, that drive today’s emerging technologies. Growing demand for more chips and companies incorporating AI and machine learning into their EDA processes mean the need for computing power is at an all-time high. For organizations in the EDA industry like Cadence, solutions that seamlessly transition workloads between on-premises and the cloud while allowing for differentiation between projects are key.

Cadence uses IBM Cloud® HPC with IBM Spectrum® LSF as its workload scheduler to support the development of chip and system design software that requires innovative solutions, powerful computing resources, and advanced security support. Cadence reports faster solution time to market, improved performance, reduced costs, and simplified workload management using IBM Cloud HPC.

Cadence also understands first-hand that moving to the cloud may require new knowledge and capabilities that not all companies possess. The Cadence Cloud comprehensive portfolio aims to help customers around the world unleash the potential of the cloud through Cadence Managed Cloud Services, a turnkey solution ideal for startups and small and medium-sized customers, and a customer-managed cloud option known as Cloud Passport. Enable Cadence tools for enterprise customers. Cadence is committed to providing customers with an easy path to the cloud by connecting them with knowledgeable service providers, like IBM®, whose platform can be used to deploy Cadence tools in cloud environments. For companies looking to drive transformation at scale, the Cadence Cloud Passport model can provide access to cloud-enabled software tools available on IBM Cloud.

Adopt a hybrid cloud approach to HPC

Traditionally, HPC systems were built on-premises. However, the large-scale models and large workloads that exist today are often incompatible with the hardware that most companies have on-premises. Given the initial cost of acquiring GPUs, CPUs, and networking, as well as the initial cost of building the data center infrastructure needed to run large-scale compute efficiently, many companies choose to turn to cloud infrastructure providers that have already made significant investments in hardware. I used it. To realize the full value of public cloud and on-premises infrastructure, many organizations are adopting a hybrid cloud architecture that focuses on mechanisms to transform portions of a company’s on-premises data centers to private cloud infrastructure.

By adopting a hybrid cloud approach to HPC that combines cloud and on-premises, organizations can leverage the best of both worlds to achieve the agility, flexibility, and security they need to meet their needs. For example, IBM Cloud® HPC can help organizations flexibly manage compute-intensive workloads on-premises. With security and controls built into the platform, IBM Cloud HPC allows organizations to use HPC as a fully managed service while addressing third- and fourth-party risks.

looking ahead

By using hybrid cloud services through platforms like IBM Cloud HPC, businesses can solve many of their toughest challenges. As organizations continue to embrace HPC, they should consider how a hybrid cloud approach can complement their existing on-premises HPC infrastructure deployments.

Learn more about how IBM can help you take a hybrid cloud approach to HPC.