My name is Rick Wagner, and I’m the Chief Technology Officer for the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). That means I get to work with a lot of smart people who like to help scientists use technology to do research. Like a lot of my colleagues, I started out using supercomputers to do research myself, when I was studying physics. As I learned more about the tools I was using for science (the computers, data, and software) I became as interested in how to improve those tools as I was in doing research. This has allowed me to work in several areas related to supercomputing, including visualization and data management, not to mention designing, building, and operating supercomputers.
Supercomputers are made up of hundreds or thousands of individual computers joined together with extremely fast networks. The fast networks mean the individual computers can work together like a single, super, computer. Beyond this definition, things get complicated, because every supercomputer is unique and designed to be better at some things than others. Some supercomputers are good at simulating earthquakes or the weather, while others can train new artificial intelligence (AI) models.
