Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing

Moore's law, first observed in the mid 60's, stated that the numbers of transistors placed on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. This exponential growth has remained largely true over the decades and has been expanded to other metrics. It means that we have computer resources literally hundreds of thousands of times greater than of that of just a few decades ago. Coupled with parallel architecture and programming advances, researchers are able to tackle simulations and data sets in orders of magnitude greater than before.

High Performance Computing has revolutionised the sciences, changing the ways in which researchers work in their respective fields. The advantage gained by complementing real world science with HPC resources is immense, allowing new insight and perspective that would be too costly, dangerous or impossible without it.

Some examples are:

• Engineers are able to build and optimise virtual vehicles such as cars and aircrafts before costly prototypes are assembled. See Engineering Case Studies.
• Emergency services and police sectors can utilise systems that allow for interaction with “live” information, drastically improving decision support and minimising the elapsed time from disaster event to decision. See Spatial Information Case Studies.
• Geophysicists simulating mantle processes gain a better understanding of where to expect important mineralogical deposits. See Geophysics Case Studies.
• Scientists scan through hundreds of billions of DNA base pairs searching for the causes and cures of cancers and other diseases. See Life Sciences Case Studies and Health Case Studies.

The scope for High Performance Computing application is continually extended by human needs, vision and innovation.

VPAC strives to enable researchers access to the very best of these HPC resources, not only in hardware and its optimisation, but also in software and research support. We actively encourage and help those groups interested in supplementing their work with HPC by personally demonstrating and guiding the new users to relevant software and methodologies. Our aim is to make the learning curve for adopting HPC technology as easy as possible. For further help visit our help pages or tutorials sections.

VPAC's strength lies in maintaining HPC services and performance to a high level. With continual changes to hardware and software libraries, it can be difficult to maintain HPC infrastructure to peak performance. Our systems team has many years experience with the construction, maintenance and optimisation of High Performance Computing, and are renowned for their prompt attention to user requests and problem solving skills.

So why use HPC? - HPC is a cutting edge scientific instrument, enabling scientist to see farther than before, much like Galileo, in the early 1600's, holding a telescope to the heavens for the first time. The enrichment in vision can be astounding; the discoveries, profound. Since its arrival, HPC is a resource and tool most disciplines cannot afford to ignore. VPAC's mission is to maintain leading HPC resources and support for its members and users. Their continual success is our success. For more information about HPC, refer to About HPC page.

Contact

If you would like to apply for an HPC user account or discuss using the VPAC Facility, please contact help@vpac.org.