HPC as a Service™ - A new offering from Penguin Computing

Penguin Computing is proud to provide Penguin Computing on Demand (or POD), a new HPC as a Service offering for its high performance computing customers.

What is High Performance Computing as a Service?

HPC as a Service is a computing model where users have on-demand access to dynamically scalable, high-performance clusters optimized for parallel computing including the expertise needed to set up, optimize and run their applications over the Internet. The traditional barriers associated with high-performance computing such as the initial capital outlay, time to procure the system, effort to optimize the software environment, engineering their system for peak demand and continuing operating costs have been removed. Instead, HPC as a Service users have a virtualized, scalable cluster available on demand that operates and has the same performance characteristics as a physical HPC cluster located in their data room.

HPC as a Service inside the Cloud

There are different definitions of cloud computing, but at the core “Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.”¹ HPC as a Service extends this model by making concentrated, non-virtualized high-performance computing resources available in the cloud.

HPC as a Service provides users with a number of key benefits:

1. HPC resources scale with demand and are available with no capital outlay – only the resources used are actually paid for.
2. Experts in high-performance computing help setup and optimize the software environment and can help trouble-shoot issues that might occur.
3. Faster time-to-results especially for computational requirements that greatly exceed the existing computing capacity.
4. Accounts are provided on an individual user basis, and users are billed for the time they use POD.
5. Computing costs are reduced, particularly where the workflow has spikes in demand.
6. Access from anywhere in the worlds with high-speed data transfer in and out.
7. Exchanging hot-swappable 2TB disk drives overnight through Federal Express provides a secure and convenient way to transfer 25GB+ data sets.