Parallel Works, Rescale Advance to Production Contracts in DOD’s High Performance Computing Program

Parallel Works and Rescale, the two companies tasked by the Defense Innovation Unit in 2022 to prototype solutions for the Department of Defense’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program, are set to transition to production contracts. 

According to the DIU, the two companies demonstrated after 18 months of prototyping that their solutions can expand the computing power of the HPCMP’s supercomputing resource centers without a significant boost in hardware requirements or costs. 

Both vendors successfully harnessed supercomputing in the cloud to integrate the centers into a robust network providing the DOD with broad HPC capabilities in a single ecosystem, the DIU said Thursday.

Benjamin Parsons, HPCMP chief technology officer, noted that the approach combining the DOD centers’ capacity and capability with the cloud service providers’ resources has given researchers access to various hardware and solutions “within one secure, easy-to-use, environment.”

U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Al Williams, DIU program manager, said that merging the DOD’s high-performance computing and sharing loads with cloud-based HPC is a task that only the commercial sector can provide currently.

Announcing its receipt of a Success Memorandum from the DIU on the prototyping, Rescale said the milestone opens DOD units’ access to its computing power without the need for the company to recompete in solicitations.