How AWS is Delivering Just-When-You-Need-It HPC

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David Linthicum from InfoWorld writes that new AWS High I/O Quadruple Extra Large instance in Elastic Cloud Compute is good news for enterprises that need short-term access to HPC capabilities. The new instance provides 2TB of local SSD-backed storage with 60.5GB of RAM running on eight virtual cores.

For HPC, Linthicum contends that this development essentially turns the Cloud Computing value proposition on its head.

If you compare commodity cloud services to the cost of doing it yourself, you typically find a small savings in the cloud. The bigger advantages are usually around convenience and lower management overhead, not equipment costs. But the equation on the high-performance end is quite different: The cost delta is much larger in favor of the cloud providers. Simply put, cloud-based high-performance computing yields substantially better ROI than its DIY equivalent. As enterprises and government agencies continue to grow the use of big data systems and other compute- and I/O-intensive tasks, the demand for high-performance computing will increase significantly. In the world of high-performance computing, the case for buying your own gear simply doesn’t make as much financial sense as getting it from the cloud.

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