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 high-speed 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.