The editors have created a very thorough survey of supercomputers in industrial (versus government, academic, and so on) applications. The book opens with a condensed history of computing up through modern supercomputers. That’s followed by more detailed, contemporary presentations from two orthogonal perspectives: supercomputing initiatives by nation (geography), and case studies of business implementations (industry). The book closes with a forecast from International Data Corporation and conclusions by the authors that all indicate that high-performance computing (HPC) will continue “to play a crucial role in technology innovation and scientific discovery in almost all areas of science and industry.”

The book is just under 300 pages long and divided into 25 chapters. It grew from a dinner discussion at the International Industrial Supercomputing Workshop, and this final product includes dozens of authors from 11 countries. While you probably can’t create a university course from this text (it’s not about concepts), it is an extremely literate text that would support HPC courses. For practitioners, the historical and geographical surveys (that is, spanning time and space) define the state of the art, while the numerous citations lead to potentially valuable research. It would be a great way to go from just another guy on a big computer project to a knowledgeable supercomputing professional.