Computer experts from around the world are meeting this week in New Orleans for the annual Supercomputing Conference, or SC14.
This year, the conference has a clear focus: HPC matters. HPC is high performance computing, which organizers say is “making the world better” through innovation.
Wilfred Pinfold is the HPC matters chair. He says supercomputers can help solve problems in health care and finance, and in issues important to New Orleaneans — like weather prediction and climate modeling.
“With more and more prediction power, computers can be more accurate about the path of storms,” Pinfold says. “So, they can predict where they’re going to hit land, and the force they're going to hit land with. That prediction is surprisingly complicated, and you have to model all of these things mathematically. These large computers are capable of doing that.”
Pinfold says that larger computers are also faster, allowing storm predictions to be made earlier, saving property and lives.
Tech and Innovation Reporting on WWNO is supported by Bellwether Technology.
