A review of high performance computing applications in high-speed rail systems

Further improving the railway innovation capacity and technological strength is the important goal of the 14th Five-Year Plan for railway scientific and technological innovation. It includes promoting the deep integration of cutting-edge technologies with the railway systems, strengthening the research and application of intelligent railway technologies, applying green computing technologies and advancing the collaborative sharing of transportation big data. The high-speed rail system tasks need to process huge amounts of data and heavy workload with the requirement of ultra-fast response. Therefore, it is of great necessity to promote computation efficiency by applying High Performance Computing(HPC) to high-speed rail systems. The HPC technique is a great solution for improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of high-speed rail systems. In this review, we introduce and analyze the application research of high performance computing technology in the field of highspeed railways. These HPC applications are cataloged into four broad categories, namely: fault diagnosis, network and communication, management system, and simulations. Moreover, challenges and issues to be addressed are discussed and further directions are suggested.