Episode 73 - Building a Cloud Supercomputer on AWS with Mike Warren

Supercomputers used to be gigantic monstrosities that would take up enormous rooms. Now, you can run them in the cloud. Just ask Mike Warren, CTO and co-founder of Descartes Labs, a company that provides Earth imagery to help folks understand planetary changes—like deforestation, water cycles, agriculture, and more. Join Corey and Mike as they discuss what it’s like to build supercomputers on top of AWS and how “easy” it is, the power of Amazon’s Spot blocks, building Beowulf clusters in the ‘90s, what Descartes Labs’ platform-agnostic infrastructure looks like (spoiler alert: nothing is on-prem), how AWS accelerates the development process, petaflop machines, the evolution of high-performance computing over the last few decades, and more.