 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re-invent 2020, sponsored by Intel, AWS, and our community partners. Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re-invent Amazon Web Services annual conference. theCUBE is normally there in person this year. We can't be, it's a virtual event. This is theCUBE virtual. I'm your host for theCUBE, John Furrier, Trish Damkroger, VP of GM and GM of the high-performance computing team at Intel. It's here on theCUBE. Intel, big part of theCUBE every year. Trish, thank you for coming on. We're remote, we can't be in person. Good to see you. Good to see you. I'm really impressed with re-invent, has it grown from kind of a small show eight years ago to now kind of a bellwether. And every year it's the same story, more scale, more performance, lower prices. This is kind of the Intel cadence that we've seen of Intel over the years. But high-performance computing, which has been around for a while, has gotten much more mainstream thinking because it's applying now to scale. So I want to get your thoughts and just set the table real quick. What does high-performance computing mean these days from Intel and how does that relate to what people are experiencing? I mean, high-performance computing, yes, it's been traditionally known as something that's in the labs, in the government, not used widely, but high-performance computing is truly just changing the world is what you can do. COVID is a great example of where they've taken high-performance computing to speed up the discovery of drugs and vaccines for COVID-19. They use it every day, whether it's making Pampers or Clorox boxes, or those bottles so that when you drop them, they don't break to designing airplanes and designing caterpillar tractors. So it is pervasive throughout and sometimes people don't realize that high-performance computing infrastructure is kind of that basics that you use whenever you need to do something with dense compute. So what's some examples of workloads? Can you just share? I mean, obviously Xeon processor, we've covered that many times, but I mean, from a workload standpoint, what kind of workloads are high-performance computing kind of related or enabled or ideal for that's out there? Right, yeah, Xeon scalable processors are the foundation for high-performance computing. If you look at what most people run high-performance computing on, it's Xeon. And I think that it's so broad. So if you look at seismic processing or molecular dynamics for the drug discovery type work, or if you think about open foam for fluid dynamics or different financial service frequency, fast-frequency trading or low, I can't even think of that word. But anyway, trading is very common using high-performance computing. I mean, it's just used pervasively throughout. Yeah, and you're seeing the cloudification of that. I want to get your thoughts. The next question is, it's not just Intel hardware you mentioned Xeon, but HPC in AWS. We're here at re-invent. Can you share how that plays out? What's your take on that? Because it's not just hardware. Can you just take them in to explain the relationship? Right, so we definitely have seen the growth of high-performance computing in the cloud over the last couple of years. We've talked about this for probably a decade and we've definitely seen that shift. And with AWS, we have this wonderful partnership where Intel is not only bringing the hardware, like you say, the Xeon scalable processors, but we're also having accelerators. And then on that whole software ecosystem where we work closely with our ISV and OSV partners. And when we bring not only compilers, but also analyzers in our full tool suite so people can move between an on-prem situation to a public cloud like AWS seamlessly. So talk about the developer impact because obviously it's a learning show re-invent. There's a lot of developers here. I'll see mainstream, obviously the born in the cloud. But now you're seeing large-scale enterprises and big businesses, you mentioned financial services from high-frequency trading to oil and gas. Every vertical has a need for cloud and you should be traditionally on-premises compute. So you're kind of connecting those dots here with AWS. What is some of the developer angle here? Because they're in the cloud too. They want to develop. How does the developer engage with you guys on HPC and Amazon? Right, well, there's a couple of ways. I mean, so we do work with some of our partners so that they can help move those workloads to the cloud. So an example is 6.9, which recently helped a customer successfully port a customized version of the NCAR model for prediction across scales. So they chose the C59-18x large instance type because this is what really delivered the highest performance and the lowest price per compute ratio. Another great example is PKI, which is a partner out of the UK, has worked with our customers to implement AI in retail and other segments running on Intel instances of the EC2. So I think these are just, so you could have people help you migrate your workloads into the cloud. But then also one of the great things I would like to talk about is AWS has come out with the parallel cluster, which is an Intel select solution, which really helps ease that transition from on-prem to cloud. That's awesome. Let's get into that parallel cluster. And you mentioned Intel select solution program. There's been some buzz on that. Can you take a minute to explain what that is? I mean, the HVC has a reputation of being hard. And the whole philosophy behind the Intel select solution is to make it easier for our customers to run HVC workloads in the cloud or on-prem. And with the Intel select solution, it's also about scaling your job across a large number of nodes. So we've made a significant investment into the full stack. So this is from the Silicon level all the way up to the application level so that we ensure that your application runs best on Intel. And we bring together all the everything that you need into basically it's a reference design. So it's a recipe where we've jointly created it with our ISV and OSV partners and our open source environment for all the different relevant workloads. And so Amazon web services is the first cloud service provider to actually verify a service such as Intel select solution. And this is amazing because this truly means that somebody can say it works today on-prem and I know it will work exactly the same in AWS cloud. That's huge. And I want to just call that out because I think it's worth noting you guys just don't throw this around like in the industry, like doing these kinds of partnerships. Intel's been pretty hardcore on the quality. And so having a cloud service provider kind of go through this thing, it's really notable. You mentioned parallel cluster deal. Can you just tie that together? Because if I get this right, the Intel select solution with the cloud service provider, Amazon is a reference design for how to go on-premise or edge or whatever it is to cloud and in a cloud. How does this parallel cluster project fit into all this? Can you just unpack that a little bit? Right. So the parallel cluster basically, it's a parallel cluster Intel select solution and there's three instances that we're featuring with the Intel Xeon Scalable Processor which gives you a variety of compute characteristics. So the select solution gives you the compute, the storage, the memory, the networking that you need, it says the specifications for what you need to run an optimal way. And then AWS has allowed us to take some of the C5, or some of the instances and we are on three different instances. We're on the C5N instance, but that's for your compute optimized workload. We're on the N5 instance and that's really for a balanced between higher memory per core ratio and then you have your R5 in instance at AWS that's really targeted for that memory intensive workloads. And so all of these are accessible within the single AWS parallel cluster environment and it's at scale and it's really your choosing of what you want to take and do. And then on top of that they are enabled with the next generation AWS Nitro system which delivers a hundred gigabits of networking for the HPC workloads. So that is huge for HPC. I was going to get to the Nitro, it was one of my top questions. Thanks for clarifying that. You know, I'm old enough to remember the old days when you had the Intel inside the PC, a shell of a box and create all that great productivity value, but with cloud, it's almost like we're seeing that again. You just hit on some key points. This is HPC, it's like memory, you've got storage, you've got networking, you've got compute, all these things kind of all kind of working together. If I get that right, you just kind of laid that out there. And it's not an Intel has to be Intel, everything you're Intel inside the cloud now. And on premise, which is the edge. 100%. There is no on premise anymore, it's cloud operations if I get this right because you're essentially bridging the two worlds with the chips. You're bringing on premise which could be edge, a big edge or a small edge in cloud. Is that right? I mean, this is kind of where this is going. Yeah, so I mean, what I think about, so a lot of the usages for HPC and the cloud is burst capacity. Most HPC centers are 100%, not 100%, because they have to do maintenance, but 95% utilized. So there is no more space. And so when you have a need to do a larger run or you need to have something done quickly, you burst to the cloud. That's just what you need to do now. I mean, or you want to try out different instances. So you want to see whether maybe that memory intensive workload would work better maybe in kind of that R5 in instance. And that gives you that opportunity to see. And also, maybe what you want to purchase. So truly we're entering this hybrid cloud model where you can't, the demand for hyper performance computing is so large that you've got to be able to burst to the cloud. I think you guys got it right. I'm really impressed and I like what I'm seeing. And I think you talked about earlier at the top of the interview, government labs and whatnot. I think those are the early adopters because when they need more power and they usually don't have a lot of big budgets so they'll max out and then go to the cloud, whether it's computing, what's going on in the ocean and climate change or all these things that they work on that need massive compute and power. That's a pretext to enterprise. So if you kind of connect the dots, you're kind of right in line with what we're seeing. So, super impressive. Thanks for sharing that. Final thoughts on this is that, you know, performance. So, okay, the next question is, okay, all great. You looking good off the tee or looking down the road, clear path to success in the future. How does the performance compare in the cloud versus on premise? It could be, well, and that's one of the great things about the Intel Select solution because we have optimized that reference design so that you can get the performance you're used to on-prem in the AWS cloud. And so that is what's so cool, honestly, about this opportunity. So we can help, you know, that small and medium business that doesn't maybe have those resources or even those industries that do, and they know they're already using that, modeling some reference design and they can now just burst to the cloud and it will work with the performance they expect. Trish, great to have you on. Great insight. Thanks for sharing all the great goodness from Intel and the AWS. Final thoughts on the partnership. We're not in-person. And by the way, Intel usually has a huge presence. The booth is usually right behind the Cube stage, which you guys sponsor. Thank you very much. Great to always partner with you. Great party, you sponsor the replay, which is always great. And it's always great party and great partnership, good content. We're not there this year. What's the relationship like? Can you take a minute to explain your final thoughts on Amazon Web Services and Intel? Yeah, no, we have a long term partnership, 14 plus year partnership with AWS. And I mean, I think it's with the year taking Intel select solution, it's going to be even a richer partnership we're going to have in the future. So I'm thrilled that I have the opportunity to talk about it and really talk about how excited I am to be able to bring more HVC into the world. It's all about the democratization of HVC because HVC changes the world. Well, Trish, congratulations on the select program with AWS and the first cloud service provider. Really is a nice directional indicator of what's going to happen. Future's laid out, of course Intel's in front. Thank you for coming on, appreciate it. No, thank you, John. Okay, this is the Cube's virtual coverage. We're not in person, AWS re-invent 2020 is virtual. Three weeks, we're over the next three weeks we're going to bring you coverage. Of course, Cube live in studio in Palo Alto will be covering a lot of the news. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break. Thank you.