Amazon, from “super computers” to the sustainable future of the Seattle giant
Amazon never ceases to amaze and expand its influence. Well, the Seattle giant now wants to “reinvent” supercomputers, or rather HPC or high performance computers, those capable of performing extremely complex calculations. This is not only to increase performance but also to cut the costs of these infrastructures, which are so high today that they do not allow access to everyone.
The news comes directly from Re:invent 2019 in Las Vegas, a regular event that has brought together developers, customers and partners from all over the world for seven years. The announcement was made by Peter DeSantis, vice president of global infrastructure at AWS.
“Every aspect of life is heavily influenced by HPC,” DeSantis said. Genetics, meteorology, and the automotive industry are just some of the aspects that have long benefited greatly from the incredible computing power offered, and the possibilities guaranteed by the AWS Cloud are among the most advanced ever.”
The American manager then recalled how important scalability and fluidity are as the network load and computational power increase, all of which are extremely relevant factors in this sector.
“The revolution in the supercomputing industry ,” DeSantis saidIt goes through the network. It’s not possible to define exactly what the workloads of a supercomputer are, but it’s clear that there’s one constant: they’re so large that they can’t fit through individual servers”. And that’s where the need for networks comes from.”Extremely high-performance machines that, when connected to each other, can allow supercomputers to work together and solve the problems for which they are called upon to operate. After all, HPCs now affect every single aspect of our lives, such as problems related to engineering or scientific research”.
Some punctilious might argue that the disadvantages of “supercomputing” are also clear: the difficulty of access, the speed with which these systems become obsolete. But AWS responds with the best of cloud technology: custom network hardware and software, drastically reduced costs, security and performance at the highest levels available today. It is undeniable, in fact, that from 2013 to 2019 AWS’s performance increased twentyfold.
The Las Vegas event has many surprises in store every year. Robert Smedley, senior engineer at Williams Formula 1 team, took the stage at AWS Re:invent and spoke about the importance of AWS Cloud Computing in the development of the car. In fact, it must be remembered that machine learning is one of those sectors in which AWS excels and it is for this reason that it is necessary to put in place the best hardware and software technologies of Ec2.
To top it all off, AWS has put in place important sustainability projects. A sensitivity that is fundamental for the protection of ecosystems. Suffice it to say that more than 50% of the energy consumed by AWS in 2018 came from renewable sources and the goal will be to reach 100% renewables in 2030.
