High performance cloud computing

Today’s high performance computing systems are typically managed and operated by individual organizations in private. Computing demand is fluctuating, however, resulting in periods where dedicated resources are either underutilized or overloaded. A cloud-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) approach for high performance computing applications promises cost savings and more flexibility. In this model virtualized and elastic resources are utilized on-demand from large cloud computing service providers to construct virtual clusters exactly matching a customer’s specific requirements.This paper gives an overview on the current state of high performance cloud computing technology and we describe the underlying virtualization techniques and management methods. Furthermore, we present a novel approach to use high speed cluster interconnects like InfiniBand in a high performance cloud computing environment.

We give an overview on the current state of HPC IaaS offerings.
► We introduce the High Performance Cloud Computing (HPC2) model.
► We present an approach to use InfiniBand in a virtualized environment.
► Based on that, we present our IaaS prototype by using the InfiniBand interconnect.
► Our prototype provides clearly lower latencies compared with Amazon HPC offerings.