Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#11

Post by mogadsheu » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 1:57 AM UTC

Strangely enough, I had a couple of classes with Xukai.

Former energy VC with the Norwegian state energy co here. Two of the companies we invested into were HPC related—one of them developed node controller solutions for parallel processing, the other developed a platform to analyze massive amounts of subsurface data more quickly.

When the cost to drill a single exploratory well costs as much as some IPO’s, in some cases with <10% expected chance of success, there’s plenty of love for supercomputing in this industry.

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#12

Post by beerandt » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

technofiend wrote: post #9

Shell Oil had a Cray 1 and an ncube when I worked there in 1989. Chevron had a Cray 1 and a raft of IBM mainframes in 1990. Chevron's DC was set up for visitors so every cluster had a sign describing the computing power for that system. Total compute power was very important because it meant they could do more analysis on seismic data to refine their oil and gas lease bids. Chevron had so much seismic data they requi…

If you knew the effort and cost that goes into large scale near and offshore seismic and non-seismic surveys then you wouldn't think twice about putting the value of the data well above the value of the hardware.

Offshore deepwater (~2500ft+) non-seismic surveys might cost 6-7 figures per day to operate, and might fill up a hard drive every 1-3 days.

Depending on how many drives fit on a tape, the raw data could get very expensive, very quickly, even before it's been processed, analyzed, etc.

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#13

Post by petschge » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 2:14 AM UTC

When going to training classes on optimal I/O strategies for new supercomputers there is usually a bunch of people working for oil companies. The simulations I do for plasma physics are considered "easy" there because they need little input, generate only a few 10 terabyte output and are by-and-large compute bound.

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#14

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 2:22 AM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #5

riskneutral wrote: post #2

Nun new. Supercomputing has been used in Oil & Gas exploration for decades.

Indeed, but interestingly enough the book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power , only has 9 mentions of the word computer and zero for supercomputer . The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power https://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/14391...

The Prize is an excellent history, though one with some very curious omissions.

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#15

Post by johnthescott » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

riskneutral wrote: post #2

Nun new. Supercomputing has been used in Oil & Gas exploration for decades.

can i hear an amen? and a huh? who did the research at wsj for this article?

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#16

Post by egdod » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

johnthescott wrote: post #15

riskneutral wrote: post #2

Nun new. Supercomputing has been used in Oil & Gas exploration for decades.

can i hear an amen? and a huh? who did the research at wsj for this article?

https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#17

Post by dreamcompiler » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

Schlumberger was a major force in AI in the 1980s when I worked there. So was Texas Instruments, which started as an oil well instrumentation company. Computing has always been important to Big Oil.

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#18

Post by kjs3 » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 4:54 AM UTC

Geotechnical users were always the second or third biggest users of supercomputers after national security users. Big oil always had the most astonishing data centers.

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#19

Post by dang » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 4:56 AM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #3

Aren't they Big Oil's old favorite toy? In the 90s, a local university near me had a Cray XMP that was a gift from some oil company after they'd decommissioned it.

Ok, given that and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21531193, and frankly just about all the other comments here, we'll take newness out of the title above. Makes the story more interesting actually.

Re: Big Oil’s Favorite Toy: Supercomputers (2018)

#20

Post by technofiend » Thu, Nov 14, 2019, 5:29 AM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #12

technofiend wrote: post #9

Shell Oil had a Cray 1 and an ncube when I worked there in 1989. Chevron had a Cray 1 and a raft of IBM mainframes in 1990. Chevron's DC was set up for visitors so every cluster had a sign describing the computing power for that system. Total compute power was very important because it meant they could do more analysis on seismic data to refine their oil and gas lease bids. Chevron had so much seismic data they requi…

If you knew the effort and cost that goes into large scale near and offshore seismic and non-seismic surveys then you wouldn't think twice about putting the value of the data well above the value of the hardware. Offshore deepwater (~2500ft+) non-seismic surveys might cost 6-7 figures per day to operate, and might fill up a hard drive every 1-3 days. Depending on how many drives fit on a tape, the raw data could get…

Absolutely and of course the opportunity cost from missing out on a lucrative oil field could buy a room full of compute.