What is Cognitive Computing

A state-of-the-art and a possible future of High Performance Computing (HPC) are discussed. The steady advances in hardware have resulted in increasingly more powerful computers. Some HPC applications that were years ago only in the domain of supercomputers can nowadays be executed on desktop and mobile computers. Furthermore, the future of computers is in the “Internet-of-things” and cyber-physical systems. There, computers are embedded into the devices such as cars, house appliances, production lines, into our clothing, etc. They are interconnected with each other and they may cooperate. Based on that, a new kind of application emerges, which requires the HPC architectures and development techniques. The primary focus of the chapter is on different hardware architectures for HPC and some particularities of HPC programming. Some alternatives to traditional computational models are given. At the end, some replacements for semiconductor technologies of modern computers are debated.