When you see crops growing in a field or storm clouds gathering, it’s probably safe to say that the first thing that comes to mind isn’t cutting-edge artificial intelligence or racks of high-performance computing nodes. But advances in predicting extreme weather and increasing crop yields are just two examples of how high-performance computing (HPC) is now powering the next generation of breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), producing real-world results that change (and even save) lives.
Powered by HPC, AI and ML are helping researchers to deal with some of the biggest problems humanity faces, from cancer to climate change. From discovering ways to feed humanity in the coming decades to understanding how the human brain creates consciousness, HPC systems are offering universities and global companies the computing horsepower to power cutting-edge AI and ML research.
Growing expertise
Many of the crops we rely on, from corn to coffee to chocolate, are set to be disrupted in coming decades as climate change takes hold. A recent study found that yields of the world’s top ten food crops are already decreasing – and that food-insecure countries are the ones who will suffer the worst. To keep up, food production will have to increase by 50 percent, but AI and HPC will be central to solving this problem.
Researchers are in a race against time to design new, more efficient ways to grow food. At present, global food production currently surpasses humanity’s needs, but in the not-too-distant future, this may no longer be the case. Understanding this problem requires enormous amounts of data, harvested from sources such as extremely high-resolution satellite imagery and weather data. To crunch this amount of data requires smart AI, backed by extremely powerful computing infrastructure. It’s a great example of how HPC will power the latest AI research.
Dr. Ranga Raju Vatsavai, an associate professor in computer science at North Carolina State University, and his team perform cutting-edge geospatial image analysis to predict the future of croplands – using HPC clusters by Lenovo as well as AI software tools like the LiCO AI Platform. In future, sensors embedded in crop fields will measure moisture and weather conditions, paving the way for an even greater understanding of the challenges facing the food we eat.
Blowing in the wind
As the world warms, extreme weather events from droughts to wildfires are becoming more common across almost every continent, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Predicting these weather events will also be more and more important as the world warms – but it’s a task far more complex than predicting if it’s going to rain tomorrow.
The power of HPC and AI is helping institutions around the world run simulations with unprecedented accuracy, helping to predict extreme weather before it occurs, from the Malaysian Meteorological Department (MMD) to the Climate Change and Hydrological Extremes Project (ClimEx).
The MMD previously delivered three-day forecasts at three-kilometre resolution. After using a Lenovo High Performance Computing (HPC) system, it now delivers forecasts up to seven days at one-kilometre resolution.
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Saving lives
Artificial intelligence led to many of the breakthroughs which helped to end the Covid-19 pandemic, from rapidly sequencing the genomes of new strains to helping to design vaccines. But in the future, AI, powered by HPC, may pave the way for even more important medical breakthroughs, speeding up cancer diagnosis, battling blindness and paving the way for a new era of personalised medicine.
Researchers at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center have built and trained an AI model which can detect retinal pathology in less than ten minutes. It’s a breakthrough which could save the sight of millions of people.
Lenovo’s GOAST (Genomics Optimisation and Scalability Tool), powered by HPC, has already accelerated the process of sequencing a whole human genome from 150-160 hours to just 18 minutes.
This data could be key to a new era of personalised medicine, where treatments are tailored genetically to individual patients, with AI delivering the insights needed to create an entirely new way to deal with illness. It’s something that the Alan Turing Institute describes as ‘the future of medicine’.
Cutting-edge research institutes around the world are turning to Lenovo’s expertise in high-performance computing to power their AI research. Sweden’s Chalmers University partnered with Lenovo to build an AI and ML environment, with an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU) for research in artificial intelligence and machine learning. AI and ML researchers at Chalmers are dealing with some of the challenges that will define our future – from how computing and communications can be more energy efficient to how human intelligence can best work alongside artificial intelligence.
High-performance computing will be central to this research – helping to create a brighter technological future for us all.
