The Top HPC Development I'v Seen In 40 Years
HPCwire, Monday, November 17th, 2025
Steve Conway recently announced his near-retirement. We couldn't let Steve slip into indulging his hobbies (reading, music, traveling, biking, kayaking) without asking one more question: what is the top HPC development you've seen during your 40-year career? What follows is his written response.
What I say here is my own opinion, Alex, not encouraged or sponsored by anyone else. You're not the first one who's asked me in the past few years what I consider the most important HPC development of the past four decades. Most people guessed I'd say the rise of the microprocessor, or cloud computing, or maybe AI or quantum computing. Nope.
Those are all transformative developments, though the impact of the last two is uncertain. It's not clear yet whether today's AI, even in extended thinking mode, is exhibiting primitive reasoning or just very sophisticated pattern matching. And quantum computing's exciting promise lies mostly ahead.