Complementary technology, not replacement technology.

Why do I say that? You can do HPC work in the cloud, but the thing to remember is that the average cloud is Intel based, which doesn't always provide the best performance (see www.top500.org).

Will your cloud be private or public? Some of the HPC work being done cannot be made public (algorithm is proprietary or the data is). is it easier/cheaper to maintain a private cloud than a large HPC implementation?

Until these questions (and others) can be answered, I don't see a resolution to the question.

No. In my view, Cloud Computing (CC) will never be able to replace High Performance Computing (HPC). Sometimes, there are situations when one does not want to do computation using the resources outside the organization. In these situation, one explicitly needs HPC and not CC. CC inside an organization is same as HPC (or even traditional Cluster Computing (CLC). Further, sometimes, someone does not want to let his/her computing resources to be used by others via CC. In such a situation also, one needs HPC and not CC. CC is useful for computations where interests of participating organization or groups are involved. For example, weather forecasting is an application where every body among us thinks that there is nothing to hide, therefore, applying CC here can be more useful as compared to only HPC.

HPC is about high performance computing; it is not about having a number of computers/processors, but using them effectively in parallel to solve a problem faster. Cloud computing provides an opportunity to scale up/down resources as an application need shrinks or grows. Usually, what the server add/delete does is to bring up/down more database servers, web servers, app-engines to service requirements faster. And this usually means forking of "obvious" chunks of work across multiple processors. HPC on the other hand is concerned about using parallel processing technologies to speed up a computation. Very little HPC issues are addressed in cloud computing today.

In theory, the flexible availability of resources can be exploited for HPC purposes. But perhaps the timescale involved in elasticity is too much for any practical HPC requirement.

Using the term of cloud computing is only marketing hype. Before we had clouds, I used webmail. Now, I am using the exact same thing, even the user interface did not change, but it's called e-mail in the cloud. I used to have my calenders and contacts stored with an on-line service, now they are in a cloud. People used to have FTP servers and the like, now files are stored in the cloud.

Basically, the concepts haven't changed, but now everything is called "to be in the cloud". This means that cloud computing is outsourcing HPC. Though cloud computers are not the same thing as regular clusters since they are usually based on virtual machines.

So, the real question is if companies will outsource HPC or use their own clusters. In some cases it is a trade-off between confidentiality and cost (with cloud computing you only pay what you use). If a local cluster is used heavily cloud computing might not make sense financially. Therefore, I guess that cloud computing is not replacing HPC for everyone.

I agree with the views of Simon Schroder.

I don't agree with Simon Schroder's points. He is mentioning only about the cloud storage. Cloud storage providers like Google Drive, DropBox are offering only the IaaS (Infrastructure as a service ). Just storing files in Cloud does not mean actual "Cloud Computing". Cloud Computing has its other services such as PaaS and Saas also.

There are many problems not yet addressed or not even studied in these areas so far. While Paas and SaaS are emerging , There is a huge need for HPC. Just assume designing a 1000 core chip is going to be possible online ( Cloud ) in future.

In practical , Cloud computing demands HPC. Finally, My conclusion is that Cloud Computing can not to replace HPC.

I, also, agree to the views of Alvioli, and S M Subramanian. In my view, Cloud Computing (CC) can be a good research area. There can be many problems worth exploring in CC. However, High Performance Computing (HPC) is also a technically sound area of research and still a research area with a lot of contribution. One may hope that HPC will remain an area of research in future also. Also, one may hope that many real world problems will be solved using CC. Both the areas will continue to be good and active areas of research in future.

I didn't mean to say that things like Google Drive or DropBox are Cloud Computing. But Google Drive has been around a long time before the term Cloud Storage has been introduced. And the same goes for many different Services in the Cloud. To me Cloud Services are just services that you can use over the internet and the resources usually belong to some other company, not your own. In this sense "cloud" is only a label that is put on internet services.

In the case of Cloud Computing I can get access to a lot of computing resources over the internet. And Cloud Computing can be used for some HPC tasks. Definitely, the focus of Cloud Computing is not HPC. You can also rent only few resources for smaller computations (which would not be HPC tasks). Not all HPC tasks would run well on Cloud Computing because of different infrastructures of compute clusters and cloud computers. But, I suspect that in theory many HPC compute jobs could be outsourced to Cloud Computing. Though in many cases companies don't allow you to copy your data to the cloud (i.e. any cloud service for that matter). And Cloud Computing is not cost effective for everyone. If you do many HPC computations it might be cheaper to have your own cluster around instead of renting cloud resources.

I have to agree with Ash that Cloud Computing and HPC are different areas of research. My point is that in some cases Cloud Computing could be used for HPC tasks (which would be outsourcing HPC computations). Nevertheless, I don't see that happen very soon because of the reasons I mentioned in my previous post.

BTW, Mr. Alvioli, I have to agree that you will not find Cray computers in the cloud any time soon. But the clusters I have access to are all Intel-based. In that case cloud computers in theory could easily replace these clusters. You can even get access to cloud computers with nVidia Tesla cards. In practice I am not allowed to move any data into the cloud. So, for me Cloud Computing is not replacing HPC clusters any time soon.

Dear all,

The cloud can be used to support HPC in some cases such as you share ( public cloud) which support all that your needs. On other hands , you need to pay a lot of attention to ensure the security of the cloud computing services which will effects the performance of cloud computation.

Moreover,The organizations demands and objectives are determined the boundaries of cloud computing and it is type. So you will be considered as a user in cloud services which not allow you to physically mange your data storage. This will less your control and may be less the performance. The second thing is cloud computing will limit your freedom by depending on the role of cloud computing provider. Again, this may be less the performance of computing.

Hi gentlemens, thanks for your answers and contributions, I think that the cloud computing can help to increase the using and development over HPC technology, due to capacity of quickly growth of servers or computing capabilities. Example Windows Azure, AWS, Rack Spaces, paralleles, etc.

Finally HPC can use Cloud for multiply your power.

HPC is possible within the cloud, you just need to create a virtual machine out of a sufficiently large number of compute instances. With regards to questions of data security, If your computer is networked what is the difference between the data being stored locally or at a remote Microsoft/amazon etc. location? The use of cloud computing will only increase. I recently attended a Microsoft Azure webinar it is amazing what is going on with cloud computing. Many researchers around the world do not have access to conventional HPC resources (clusters or workstations) and so the cloud enables these countries to use the infrastructure to perform complex calculations.

With regards to the original question, cloud computing will not replace HPC technology. It will merely become a platform to enable easier, quicker and wider access to HPC resources.

what happen if i make the whole system HPC system in private cloud computing online mode?