HPC in the Cloud: Featured

Avoiding Scientific Computing Bottlenecks in the Cloud

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:55:14 EDT

Frank Ding, engineering analysis & technical computing manager at Simpson Strong-Tie, discussed the advantages of utilizing the cloud for occasional scientific computing, identified the obstacles to doing so, and proposed workarounds to some of those obstacles.

Overcoming the Cloud Security Barrier for Financial Services

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:41:59 EDT

The private industry least likely to adopt public cloud services for data storage are financial institutions. Holding the most sensitive and heavily-regulated of data types, personal financial information, banks and similar institutions are mostly moving towards private cloud services – and doing so at great cost.

Research Roundup: Toward a More Efficient Cloud

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:00:58 EDT

In this week's hand-picked assortment, researchers explore the path to more energy-efficient cloud datacenters, investigate new frameworks and runtime environments that are compatible with Windows Azure, and design a uniﬁed programming model for diverse data-intensive cloud computing paradigms.

The Evolution of the Virtual Platform

Tiffany Trader — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:08:32 EDT

At the 2013 Open Fabrics International Developer Workshop, in Monterey, California, VMware's in-house HPC expert Josh Simons delivered a presentation on the Software-Defined Datacenter. At its essence, a software-defined datacenter is a prescriptive model for bringing the benefits of virtualization to rest of the datacenter.

On the Verge of Cloud 2.0

Tiffany Trader — 2013-04-26

Last week Mellanox debuted a new network adapter, ConnectX-3 Pro, the first interconnect solution to feature cloud offload engines for overlay networks. Like its predecessor, ConnectX-3, it supports both 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet as well as 56Gb/s InfiniBand, but it's the overlay offloading engine that is poised to unlock cloud's potential.

Research Roundup: Prepping Clouds for Data Influx

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:41:41 EDT

In this week's hand-picked assortment, researchers explore the path to data-intensive cloud computing, investigate extreme heterogenous architectures for a truly multi-purpose cloud, and set out to create a more predictable cloud programming model...

Middleware Is Cool

Tiffany Trader — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:23:39 EDT

Despite the important advances that middleware enables in both the HPC and enterprise spheres, it generally fails to elicit the same excitement as, say, brand-new leadership class hardware. But middleware, such as Adaptive Computing's intelligent management engine, Moab, is cool and you don't have to take Adaptive's word for it. During the company's annual user event last week, Gartner gave Adaptive its "Cool Vendor" stamp of approval.

Five Steps to a Private Cloud

Tiffany Trader — 2013-04-12

One of the sessions at this week's MoabCon event focused on best practices for private cloud. There are five steps that Adaptive recommends for companies seeking to transition into the next-generation of IT: Focus on ROI, Facilitating Self-Service, Use Chargeback, Continuously Optimize, and lastly, Go Vertical – Not Horizontal...

HPC in the Cloud Research Roundup

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:18:20 EDT

The top research stories of the week have been hand-selected from leading scientific centers, prominent journals and relevant conference proceedings. In this week's assortment, researchers tackle the distinctions between HPC and science clouds, present a way to use fuzzy logic to make clouds more efficient, and provide a review of grid security best practices.

Data Protection: One Size Does Not Fit All

Tiffany Trader — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:45:53 EDT

In object storage applications, cluster sizes run the gamut from just a few nodes built into a medical imaging modality to thousands of nodes spanning multiple datacenters. Fulfilling the economic and manageability promises of a unified storage approach means using the best protection scheme for each particular use case. The proposed solution leverages both replication and erasure coding to ensure scalability, while optimizing footprint efficiency.

HTC, Big Data and the God Particle

Xtenit Help — 2013-03-29

Contributor Miha Ahronovitz traces the history of high throughput computing (HTC), noting the particularly enthusiastic response from the high energy physics world and the role of HTC in such important discoveries as the Higgs boson. As one of the biggest generators of data, this community has been dealing with the "big data" deluge long before "big data" assumed its position as the buzzword du jour.

HPC in the Cloud Research Roundup

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:03:57 EDT

Our top HPC cloud research story this week lays out a lightweight approach to implementing virtual machine monitors. Other items explore an innovative parallel cloud storage system, HPC-to-cloud migration, anywhere-anytime cluster monitoring, and a framework for cloud storage.

Why Cloud Computing Hasn't Taken Off in the EU

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:00:56 EDT

Cloud computing has been very slow to catch in the EU, not because they didn't know about it or didn't have the resources to make use of it, but because most Europeans are considerably more paranoid about the security of their data.

HPC in the Cloud Research Roundup

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:21:39 EDT

The top HPC cloud research story this week addresses the question: What if it were possible to cheaply and easily test the suitability of moving to a cloud platform – a virtual "try it before you buy it"? In other items, researchers explore the reliability of HPC cloud, take another pass at GPU virtualization, and evaluate I/O performance in Amazon's EC2 cloud.

HPC Bolsters Life Sciences

Tiffany Trader — 2013-03-14

HPC, cloud and big data are experiencing this rich synergy, and it seems nowhere is this more evident than in life sciences. The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), a new state-of-the-art facility in Western Mass., just received more than $4.5 million in funding for a cloud-based system for computational biology that will tap into this union.

UberCloud HPC Experiment Readies for Round Three

Tiffany Trader — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:40:13 EST

The UberCloud Experiment is issuing an open invitation to members of the HPC, CAE, life sciences, and big data communities to join round three. Teams will be involved in applying the cloud computing services model to compute and data-intensive workloads on remote cluster computing resources. The idea behind the experiment is to explore the end-to-end process of using remote computing resources as a service, and learning to tackle the many roadblocks.

Utility Supercomputing Heats Up

Tiffany Trader — 2013-02-28

The HPC in the cloud space continues to evolve and one of the companies leading that charge is Cycle Computing. The utility supercomputing vendor recently reported a record-breaking 2012, punctuated by several impressive big science endeavors.

HPC in the Cloud Research Roundup

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:14:29 EST

The HPC cloud top research stories of the week have been hand-selected from prominent journals and leading conference proceedings. Items this week include an evaluation of a cloud storage service, an HPC cloud proof-of-concept, and a survey of cloud-based workflows.

Warning to Cloud Adopters: Check the Fine Print

Tiffany Trader — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:52:52 EST

Central to the attraction of cloud computing is the "pay for only what you use" claim made by almost all service providers. But look a little deeper within the contracts and you will often find that they are not quite as attractive as first appears.

Yottamine Serves Up Predictive Analytics On-Demand

Tiffany Trader — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 22:32:10 EST

Startup Yottamine Analytics is riding the twin waves of cloud and big data. Its cloud-based predictive modeling solution combines the benefits of EC2 spin-up automation and large-scale program parallelism to provide predictive power by the hour for pennies a minute.

UK Creates Massive 200,000-Core 'HPC Service'

Tiffany Trader — 2013-02-07

The United Kingdom is rapidly ramping up its HPC capabilities. The nation just launched its third HPC service in the last 12 months, a 200,000-core powerhouse, called "Accelerator," designed to accommodate a wide range of academic and industry workloads.