A Brief History of High Performance Computing: From Supercomputers to the Cloud

High performance computing (HPC) emerged in the 1960s with the development of the first supercomputers. A major milestone was reached in 1976 with the introduction of the Cray-1, renowned for its innovative vector processing architecture. The 1990s saw the rise of parallel computing, enabling multiple processors to collaborate on a single task, thus significantly boosting processing power. The early 2000s witnessed the advent of clusters and grid computing, democratizing HPC and making it accessible to a broader range of users. Today, HPC continues to evolve with cloud computing and the pursuit of exascale computing, paving the way for faster, more complex simulations and data analysis.