Bridging this gap demands domainaware I / O strategies, adaptive caching and hybrid data architectures that preserve performance while exploiting cloud scalability.
4. THE CLOUD’ S HIDDEN LIMITS
Despite the promise of infinite scale, the cloud has physical limits.
At large sizes, geoscience workloads encounter real constraints – cluster size limits, network address exhaustion, data-transfer caps and regional capacity constraints. These limits only appear under extreme load, but for energy supercomputing, they are the norm, and thus unavoidable. Understanding and designing around them is key to building production-grade cloud HPC.
THE ROAD AHEAD
AI is rapidly transforming geoscience computing – from automating seismic interpretation to optimising reservoir modelling and production planning. But realising these gains requires HPC environments that are elastic, faulttolerant, data-centric and AI-ready.
This shift is already visible in major industry collaborations uniting leading geoscience data providers, cloud hyperscalers and digital engineering specialists. Recent initiatives – such as the one we are leading at EPAM systems in conjunction with TGS and AWS – show how re-architected cloud HPC platforms can deliver end-toend seismic and subsurface workflows, seamlessly integrating AI, scalable compute and high-performance storage. The result: faster insights, higher efficiency and a markedly lower carbon footprint. These advances are setting a new template for energy operators seeking to modernise their compute-intensive environments.
Emerging orchestration frameworks can now enable multi-vendor interoperability, allowing workloads to move securely and efficiently across different clouds. For example, the Energy HPC Orchestrator( EHO), developed as a collaboration between EPAM Systems and AWS in partnership with several major oil and gas operators demonstrates how scalable job management, data movement and cost optimisation can be unified under a single control plane.
For operators, the implication is profound: HPC is no longer a fixed asset – it’ s an adaptive capability, accessible on demand and tuned to evolving exploration and production needs.
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