In February, the NAFEMS HPC Working Group, chaired by Lee Margetts, ran a seminar in Manchester, UK entitled "Improving HPC Adoption in Engineering Simulation". There are considerable technical benefits to the use of HPC for engineering simulation and several access options, from a fully in-house capability to running on third party hardware, "in the cloud".

In principle, this should mean that engineers who would benefit from HPC all have a route for access and yet, it is still relatively uncommon, especially in SMEs. The focus of the seminar, on improving adoption, was to understand why this is the case and share with those present the benefits and access options available. Interspersed with the invited presentations were short presentations from several relevant vendors, showcasing some of the solutions available, including hardware and software, cloud computing facilitators and remote visualisation.