Some HPC success stories are too powerful to ignore. Though HPC for Energy focuses on the advancement of energy technologies through HPC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and IBM’s recent efforts to model the human heart deserve recognition for demonstrating the new level of scientific accomplishment made increasingly possible through HPC capabilities here in the US.

To develop better therapies for heart disease, LLNL and IBM developed a new code known as “Cardioid” and ran simulations on Sequoia, a Blue Gene/Q supercomputer currently ranked 2nd in the world.

How exactly does a company use HPC modeling and simulation to develop new technologies? HPC for Energy has produced “HPC in Action: Navistar” to give a behind the scenes look at one company’s HPC success story. This video explains how Navistar worked with a team of LLNL scientists to improve tractor trailer fuel economy across the country. The combination of wind tunnel testing and HPC enabled Navistar to optimize the design and significantly reduce the testing period for new drag-reduction technologies. By quickly identifying and deploying practical solutions, Navistar and LLNL improved tractor trailer fuel economy by 17%, which will save 4.6 billion gallons of fuel per year in the U.S.

This week concluded the Washington Conference and Technology Workshop entitled The Changing Outlook for U.S. Energy: Will Shale Gas Transform America’s Energy Future?. The conference identified high-performance computing as a powerful tool to improve the production and environmental impact of shale gas. HPC’s value reaches beyond the oil and gas industry, and energy companies of all sizes will benefit from clear information on how to engage the HPC resources resident at our national labs.

In May 2011, national leaders established the National Roadmap on Advancing Energy Technologies through High-Performance Computing. Since then, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Howard Baker Forum have launched the HPC for Energy Initiative to enact the Roadmap’s recommendations. In this video interview, Dona Crawford, leader of Livermore’s cutting-edge HPC programs, details various elements of the HPC for Energy Initiative.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Sequoia supercomputer, an IBM BlueGene/Q system, was ranked as the world’s fastest supercomputer on June 18, 2012. Sequoia boasts 16.32 petaflops using 1,572,864 cores, but how fast can it complete calculations? This infographic puts its speed into perspective, demonstrating the potential of American HPC resources to save organizations time and money. 

According to IBM, “1 in 3 business leaders make critical decisions without the information they need,” and at the same time, vast amounts of information and data are becoming increasingly available. Properly capturing and analyzing “Big Data” makes an organization “2.2 times more likely to substantially outperform their industry peers.” The data analytics and computing capabilities found in our national laboratories–in collaboration with IBM–represent a valuable national asset. You can find this infographic and others on IBM’s flickr page. Check out Noah Goldstein’s blog post to learn more about the connection between Big Data and HPC.

IBM has created a number of impressive infographics about the competitive advantages of HPC. This one, “High Performance Computing for Industry,” provides examples of how the Boeing Company, Vestas Wind Systems, and Red Bull Racing have leveraged HPC. You can find this infographic and other insightful information on IBM’s Deep Computing Solutions tumblr page. More great IBM infographics coming soon.

Supercomputers like Sequoia are only part of how High Performance Computing can help American business. Programmers must also develop software codes to enable multiple parts of a problem to be solved simultaneously, a time and money-saving process known as parallel computing.