Inside SC24: Exclusive Interview with Our Product Manager
Our Hypertec Cloud team had the exciting opportunity to attend Supercomputing Conference 2024 in Atlanta this year. SC24 is one of the biggest events in high-performance computing (HPC), networking, storage, and analysis. It’s a place where brilliant minds from around the world come together to showcase advancements and explore the future of computational technologies. To give you an insider’s perspective, we caught up with our Product Manager, Nathalie, who was there in person, to hear about her insights and takeaways from this year’s incredible conference. Let’s get started!
Q: Nathalie, did you observe any key themes or trends that stood out during SC24?
Nathalie: Yes! The conference highlighted many exciting trends for both HPC and AI. Three key themes stood out to me:
- Energy efficiency took center stage for Data Center solutions. Technologies like liquid-cooling and immersion cooling were heavily featured on the show floor, reflecting the industry’s growing focus on energy efficiency and sustainability while tackling the immense power demands of modern workloads.
- There is also a clear pivot toward dedicating more resources to inference, aimed at monetizing previous investments in AI training. This shift has sparked the emergence of new hardware products from the silicon industry designed specifically to augment inference workloads. For examples, new AI accelerator cards with advanced software layers, GPUs with larger sizes and transistor counts, and AI-optimized architecture delivering impressive compute performance. Also, Open-Source large language models (LLMs) are being further optimized at the kernel level to enable seamless communication with dedicated chipsets to further boost performance.
- On the networking side, I am seeing established compagnies driving the adoption of Ethernet-based GPU fabric infrastructure, signaling a move toward scalable and sometimes more cost-effective networking solutions tailored for AI and HPC. This trend highlights the industry’s push for distributed training and inference across different locations, enabled by more efficient connectivity.
I also observed the increased adoption of Kubernetes and automated infrastructure management to enhance operational efficiency.
Q: In your opinion, what are the most pressing needs of AI and HPC customers right now?
Nathalie: Everything, of course, needs to move faster—advancing compute, data management, and distribution across data centers.
For AI and HPC customers, achieving low latency while preserving high accuracy remains a top priority, along with real-time analytics and solutions that prioritize secure data handling and privacy. This has driven a growing demand for high performance, better integration across diverse environments, robust automation, and edge computing solutions that are deployed across on-premises and cloud systems.
Additionally, with ambitious goals to reduce power and water consumption in data centers, customers are placing greater emphasis on optimizing infrastructure, workloads, and physical space. Sustainability and resource efficiency have become essential—not optional—for achieving both business objectives and environmental commitments.
Q: What was your favorite moment from SC24?
Nathalie: Many of our partners organized stellar events, making it a challenge to keep up and attend them all. We had to divide and conquer! One of my favorite highlights was the Dell Customer Appreciation Event, where we enjoyed an AI-powered journey at the College Football Hall of Fame that transformed us into football coaches and players from various eras. It was innovative, immersive, and just plain fun! We had lots of laughers seeing ourselves on the screens. What a creative way to celebrate!
Q: Any meaningful conversations with potential partners, clients, or vendors?
Nathalie: Attending SC24 and showcasing our new products was an excellent decision for us. It provided a valuable opportunity to connect with the HPC and AI community, engage in meaningful face-to-face discussions with collaborators, organize meetups between clients and partners, and hold introductory technical meetings.
The event also allowed our team to attend technical sessions and partner events, gaining valuable insights into the latest advancements from the community — an especially important opportunity given the rapid pace of development in HPC and AI. Having all this concentrated knowledge power in one conference is unmatched!
I also noticed a significant crossover from various industries, demonstrating the broad adoption of HPC and AI across diverse business, academia, government, enterprise, and technology initiatives.
I believe this experience will be instrumental in accelerating and aligning many developments we are focusing on for 2025 and beyond. I am really looking forward to returning to this conference next year!
Q: Speaking of adoption, what should be prioritized during the AI adoption process?
Nathalie: Good question. I truly believe education and rapid deployment are the core principles of AI adoption. Hypertec Cloud is deeply committed to guiding our clients through their AI transition journey. To achieve this, we customize new clusters based on their specific needs and collaborate with strong partners who bring a high level of expertise, enabling us to empower our users and collaborators more effectively.
Power availability continues to be a challenge and a hot topic within the data center community, I’m very excited about some major Hypertec Cloud announcements coming in early 2025 —stay tuned everyone!
Q: Last question, were there any unexpected opportunities for collaboration or partnerships?
Nathalie: SC24 welcomed over 18,000 attendees and nearly 500 exhibitors. While our team takes the time to process all the valuable feedback we received, we have already acted on several opportunities that came up during and after the conference. Fingers crossed!
I was especially proud of our Together AI partnership announcement during SC24 and to unveil our new Immersion-Born GPU server. I can’t reveal too much right now, but we have more partnerships in development, which we look forward to sharing soon! With over 40 years of experience and a network of hundreds of OEM partners, our team continues its rapid trajectory of development, always seeking to integrate the latest proven technologies from both emerging and established partners. SC24 really provided a great way to fast track these types of interactions and I’m so grateful to be part of the event this year!
