We gave a professional interview to the international publication The Innovation Platform. Among other things, we talked about Estonian success stories, computing capabilities, the LUMI artificial intelligence factory, and the eesti.ai initiative. A must-read for those who want to learn a little more about the activities of the Estonian Scientific Computing Infrastructure and the role supercomputers play in our lives.

If you had to dispel one myth about HPC, what would it be?

Ülar Allas: I have heard experts suggest that more compute cycles are always better. In practice, this is not the case. Hardware without the necessary expertise is an extremely effective way to waste resources. HPC is a tool for acceleration and amplification – and it can amplify both expertise and poor decision-making alike.

Aadi Tegova: HPC is often misunderstood, even within the technology sector. One common myth is that it is simply a faster version of a desktop computer. In reality, HPC is a coordinated network of many machines, not just a single, more powerful system.

Moreover, HPC is not only about speed – it is about scale and parallelism. These systems often consist of thousands of nodes working together, using specialised architectures and high-performance interconnects to solve problems that a single machine simply cannot handle.

Read more at Innovation News Network