Industry Expert Blogs
Stoking the Fire in HPCarm Blogs - David Lecomber, ArmMay. 05, 2022 |
In the early 2010’s, Arm enthusiasts started gathering kindling in hopes of lighting a small fire with new technologies and providing a critically needed alternative to the dominant x86 architecture. The effort, known as Mont Blanc, was an ambitious project based in the EU. Against strong headwinds from many directions, the project was able to pave the way for bigger and better things.
Along the way, an Arm HPC community was formed. We welcomed formal OS support from RedHat, SUSE and others, as well as OpenHPC and a host of software necessary for HPC. The kindling was catching fire as in 2018, HPE sponsored the Catalyst project in the UK involving three leading universities (Edinburgh, Bristol & Leicester). In 2018, the first Arm-based system arrived on the Top500. An HPE system based on Marvell, the Astra supercomputer at Sandia National Laboratory, landed at #203 in November that year.