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.

About Mike Warren

Mike Warren is cofounder and CTO of Descartes Labs. Mike’s past work spans a wide range of disciplines, with the recurring theme of developing and applying advanced software and computing technology to understand the physical and virtual world. He was a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 25 years, and also worked as a Senior Software Engineer at Sandpiper Networks/Digital Island. His work has been recognized on multiple occasions, including the Gordon Bell prize for outstanding achievement in high-performance computing. He has degrees in Physics and Engineering & Applied Science from Caltech, and he received a PhD in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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