What are the 3 reasons why we all need a supercomputer (HPC) in our life?

I am an Android guy. 

Well that is not quite true. In 2009 I was a happy owner of the second iPhone generation, the iPhone 3G.

SInce I ditched my iPhone 3G, I have always been faithful to Android operating system phones.

In 2010, I was the happy owner of the HTC Desire HD. I loved the software from HTC at that time.

Then Google released the Nexus 5 in 2013. I jumped right away and got one. Well I bought another one 6 months after.

Paris, Summer 2014, Bercy Bridge

Me: Oh that’s a nice boat, I must take a picture of that boat.

I take out my beautiful red Nexus 5 from my pocket. I hold it with 2 fingers with my left hand, the middle finger on the top of the screen and my thumb on the bottom.

To get a nice original picture, I hold my phone over the bridge and I click on the screen with my right hand forefinger.

3 seconds later, with the help of gravity, I learn that my phone cannot swim and I see it sink before my eyes in the troubled water of “La Seine” river.

Hence the second Nexus 5, this one was black.

I am a big fan of an original and a pristine experience when it comes to Android phones. I hate Samsung phones because of their not so cool, not so updated additional layer on Android.

My current phone: the Oneplus 5, which by the way, just got the latest version of Android 10. I confirm that it is working perfectly. Thank you Oneplus! And shame on you, Samsung!

My Oneplus 5 has 6GB of RAM (Random Access Memory).

Can you guess how much RAM the computer that sent Humanity on the moon had?

The Apollo 11s Guidance Computer (AGC) had only 32,768 bits of RAM memory.

An iPhone with 4GB of RAM - (that’s 34,359,738,368 bits) packs more than 1 million times more memory than the Apollo 11’s Guidance Computer.

How amazing is that? 

It is something quite fascinating for me that we used that less computer memory to send a man on the moon.

Are you familiar with HPC or High performance computers, aka supercomputers?

The latest iPhone is not even close to being the AGC to a supercomputer.

“High Performance Computing most generally refers to the practice of aggregating computing power in a way that delivers much higher performance than one could get out of a typical desktop computer or workstation in order to solve large problems in science, engineering, or business.”

Souce: Insidehpc

HPC computers are so expensive that most of them are owned either by China or the United States.

 The most powerful one as of today is owned by IBM, Summit, with a price tag of more than $ 325 millions. 

What if I told you that you also can afford to have an HPC, with zillions of calculations per second?

Well let me tell you how I built my own HPC, free of charge.

And if I can do it, so do you!

For me, HPC stands for:

1. H as Hard Work
2. P as Patience
3. C as Consistency

As always, let me elaborate and dive in further.

1. H as Hard Work

“Had work works.”

#GranPa

Yes we all have unfair advantages, whether we know it or not. 

Some of us are born in wealthy families, in the right neighborhood.

Some of us are born with the “right” skin color.

Some of us have the right education and the right connections.

Some of us, like me in High school, have some good memory, math oriented.

Basically in life, we are gifted with some advantages that can be seen as unfair to other people and vice versa. Most of the unfair advantages we have is not the results of our own doing.

Most of my high school years in Dakar, Senegal, I was lazy, relying only on my unfair advantages on math and the ability to memorize quickly. 

It was when I joined the “Classes Préparatoires aux grandes Ecoles” that I had to hustle because I was stripped of that unfair advantage. I had to work hard to get into ISAE, the engineering school in Toulouse, France in 2003.

Once at ISAE, I worked to get my degree, I cannot say that it was as hard as before.

Then as a foreingn student in France, I had to work hard in 2008 after my studies to get a permanent contract to get a resident card.

Then I got a job as a subcontractor for Airbus. In 2008, I got the French nationality and in 2012, I was finally hired as a permanent in Airbus. That was a dream come true for me!

Then I said to myself: you are at Airbus, now you have arrived. Settle down, get your monthly paycheck and wait for retirement while enjoying the great canteen on the premises.

Well, as you guess, this olan failed. Because this sounds like a plan until it is not.

Even though I was working and getting some praise, I was not getting where I wanted to be in terms of contribution and impact, not only within Airbus, yet also outside of Airbus.

2017, I start a new journey with more hard work and discipline to build my mad empire. 

1st step: getting married...and the rest is history being written!

In the past 3 years, I have been working hard to improve my mind, my body, my spirit and my skills. 

The result: I have been creating my own luck with my hard work!

2. P as Patience

“Patience is power.”

#GranPa

Everything that lasts was not built in one day. EArth took billions of years to craft Nature as we see it before our eyes.

Since I was a child, I have never been patient. Back in Dakar, Senegal, I was patient because I was not aware of the possibilities that I could have.

When I arrived in France in 2000, I was surrounded by possibilities. Then my patience faded away.

Like a beast who was starved to death, and now unleashed into the wild, I wanted it all, like for yesrteday.

Once I finished my studies in 2008, after some months in my 1st job, I already wanted to be a “manager”. All I wanted back then was to be the boss, and to show that now, “I arrived” in France.

Like a dam, you have to first accumulate potential energy before you can be that qinetiq, and unstoppable force. 

The best way for me to illustrate patience is with maths, the First Order and the Second order.

Let plot 2 simple equations: 

• y=x, a linear (first degree in x exponent) equation where for every x, y is equals to x.
• y=x^2, a quadratic (second degree in x exponent) equation where for every x, y is x times x.

We will plot this equation for all x values which are lower than 1. The plot is displayed below:

As a short term minded person, I can say that I should only do the minimum and stick to y=x, not compounding my input x.

Clearly I am winning in this game, right?

Now let’s take a step back and see for values of x which are higher than 1 as shown below:

Well, well, well, the tables have turned now.

How often, while x is below 1, we abandon our idea, our project?

As shown by science, in order to win, in the game of life, we must ditch the First Order and embrace the power of the quadratic force. This is the force that will awaken your infinite game power. 

Once I saw the graphs above, I came to the realization that in order to win eventually, we have to lose first. This was what set me on the right trajectory in the long run.

3. C as Consistency

“Consistency beats intensity.”

#GranPa

Consistency is the last leg that will make the plan stable, once you have already got hard work and patience.

Consistency is for me doing a little every day, no matter what. We all are familiar with the domino effect. 

In dominos, once set correctly, by adding a little domino every day, all you need for a massive impact is a little push.

I will let the Joker, from the Dark Knight trilogy, say it:

“Madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push”, Joker

Everyday we do thousands of little pushes, most of them unconscious and some cunscious. 

Choosing not to learn from my mistakes, a little push every day.

Choosing not to eat healthy, a little push, every day.

Choosing to binge watch Netflix, a little push, every day.

Choosing to do the bare minimum, a little push every day.

Some of us are lucky to have more conscious little pushes that unconscious ones every day.

Improving your body, a little push every day.

Improving your mind, a little push every day.

Improving your heart, a little push every day.

Improving your soul, a little push every day.

I let Robin Sharma share his thoughts on The 4 Interior Empires of History-Makers:

I use this approach of baby steps every day, to be able to crawl through my life.

I use this approach of baby steps every day, to be able to walk through my life.

I use this approach of baby steps every day, to be able to run through my life.

I use this approach of baby steps every day, to be able to fly through my life.

Now I have it up and running, an HPC supercomputer, that is helping me build a life of efficiency, a life of responsibility and a life of sustainability.

My HPC only costs me less than the price of a Raspberry Pie to build and maintain. Yet it yields results beyond the Summit any HPC supercomputer will ever be able to climb.

What are your HPC powers ?

Are you more Android or iPhone?

What’s your take in the First Order?

Leave a comment below.

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You can read my previous article on What are the 3 best ways to reach Inbox ZERO for your brain?

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash