Jose M. Bernabeu-Auban

Cloud computing architecture and application programming: DISC'09 tutorial, half day, Sept. 22nd 2009

Over the past decade, scientific and engineering research via computing has emerged as the third pillar of the scientific process, complementing theory and experiment. Several studies have highlighted the importance of computational science as a critical enabler of scientific discovery and competitiveness in the physical and biological sciences, medicine and health care, and design and manufacturing. The ability to create rich, detailed models of natural and artificial phenomena and to process large volumes of experimental data, itself created by a new generation of scientific instruments that are themselves powered by computing, makes computing a universal intellectual amplifier, advancing all of science and engineering and powering the knowledge economy. This revolution has been enabled by the availability of inexpensive, powerful processors; low cost, large capacity storage devices; and flexible software tools, each driven by a vibrant consumer and industry marketplace. The explosive growth of research computing systems has created major management, technical and fiscal challenges for both funding agencies and research universities. Typically, faculty members acquire research computing systems, usually small to medium (32–256 nodes) clusters, via research grants and contracts and departmental funds. This distributed acquisition of research computing and inadequate plans for long-term sustainability and technology refresh, mean that universities and funding agencies that support university research, are now struggling to create and maintain compute and data centers to house these systems and to operate and maintain them reliably, in energy-efficient, environmentally friendly ways. Moreover, university budget constraints make efficiency ever more necessary. A growing challenge is satisfying the ever rising demand for research computing and data management the enabler of scientific discovery. Fortuitously, the emergence of cloud computingsoftware and services hosted by networks of commercial data centers and accessible over the Internet offers a solution to this conundrum.