Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are often ideally placed to use new technologies without the organisational constraints of their larger counterparts. However, when those technologies require
significant capital investment, this isn’t possible. High Performance Computing (HPC) is one area where the costs are often seen to outweigh the benefits, with the capital expenditure a relatively modest part of the total cost of ownership, which includes specialist IT personnel, customisation and implementation, maintenance, training
and power consumption. Although many people would dispute that High Performance Computing is a new technology, to date it has had a relatively poor up-take within industry, with only the largest organisations that have already defined very specific requirements. Yet HPC can bring benefits across the board to many organisations, particularly for engineering simulation. Two European projects are currently underway to address this, Fortissimo and SHAPE.