Infrastructure engineers traditionally focus their attention on the hardware platform that powers their businesses. Historically, component manufacturers released processors with higher performance and memory with greater capacity seemingly every day. The laws of physics have caught up, and capacity/performance gains are more incremental than leaving hardware manufacturers to shift how they position their products. The hardware is relatively “the same”, so they need to change and offer better service and deeper integration into the application layer.
Penguin Computing has driven toward this goal since its founding in 1998. They began operations as a Linux server manufacturer. However, they quickly understood that customers needed more than a platform and started providing entire High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions to meet their customers where they are in their HPC and AI journey.
HPC and AI Require More Than Hardware
Managing hardware infrastructure is a difficult task. HPC and AI applications elevate the difficulty to another level. The components that enable these advanced, cutting-edge workloads are complex and power-hungry. It takes more than just putting another chip onto a riser card to enable HPC and AI in an enterprise.
There is a specific skillset required to make the applications run at peak performance. These valuable skills are, frankly, rare among enterprise engineers. The complexity of the applications and the lack of in-house expertise combine to present significant challenges to enterprises that demand the capabilities of HPC and AI platforms.
Penguin Computing Specializes in HPC Solutions
Penguin Computing has been a player in the HPC space from the beginning. They purchased Scyld Software in 2003, making them a leader In Linux clustering. They learned from their success and fine-tuned their platform into a purpose-built HPC solution. Penguin Computing understood they had to focus their solution expertise to succeed beyond offering a solid hardware platform. They provide solutions and architectural guidance for four key practices:
- HPC
- AI & Analytics
- Data
- Cloud
These are very diverse practices, though when you look closer, you can see they all require a carefully architected platform and a well-designed software suite. Without a partner to guide the way, a customer will struggle to deliver the results the organization requires.
Briefly digging into the HPC practice, Penguin Computing offers a full-stack of HPC solutions. Their TrueHPC product is a complete, enterprise-supported HPC solution, combining software, hardware, and management for HPC workloads. They offer InsightHPC, an out-of-the-box option focused on AI workloads, enabling customers to use HPC and AI platforms separately or combined with a unified data pipeline. AccessHPC is an on-premises HPC solution with public-cloud scalability. It is a solution to build hybrid clouds and achieve workload portability.
Meeting Customers Where They Are
Penguin Computing realizes the need for HPC and AI-enabled solutions to process the data and solve problems, but they are also aware of the skill gap and the considerable barriers to using these products. Penguin Computing is meeting their customer’s requests by providing managed services and HPC as-a-service. They meet their customers where they are. If an experienced organization needs additional infrastructure, they can purchase a solution and run it themselves. Not every customer is in that position, and there are solutions designed with that constraint in mind. Penguin Computing can host custom solutions in their secure cloud data center and even offer Penguin Computing On-Demand (POD). The POD solution is a true public cloud offering and enables a hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environment.
A significant shift is occurring in the HPC and AI platform industry. It is becoming more challenging to sell hardware. Customers expect their vendors to become a partner and a part of their team. Penguin Computing fills that role, focusing on business problems first, designing a solution for that problem, and bundling their software platforms to help achieve the outcomes their customers desire. They provide vast flexibility in consuming the solutions, where the solution can reside, and service and support. They meet their customers where they are.
Learn More
HPC and AI platforms are very complex. It is critical to have an expert at your side. Penguin Computing provides the experience, the solution, and the service-oriented perspective to help ease the complexity with HPC and AI.
Check out their website to learn more about their solution stack.
