Enabling high performance computing in cloud computing environments

Abstract

Cloud Computing is a server based model which provides shared pool of resources for the clients to access from a remote location. It provides various advantages to the users such as Pay-as-you-go model, elasticity, flexibility and dynamic customization offered by the virtualization. The present high speed networks and low cost devices led to the growth of cloud computing. Currently, High Performance Computing (HPC) applications are run in computing clusters which are set-up on their own. It requires ownership, high initial set-up cost and recurring maintenance cost which are unwanted burden for the HPC application users. So, it would be advantageous to use cloud service for the HPC applications which would result in huge savings. But, due to the interconnect bandwidth and heterogeneity involved in the cloud service, HPC applications provide poor performance in the cloud. We evaluate the current performance of HPC applications in the existing cloud infrastructures and then discuss various techniques to mitigate interference, virtualization overhead and problems due to shared resources in the cloud. In the end, we conclude with future works that can be done to ensure that HPC applications are more suitable for the cloud.