High-performance computing users embracing cloud services

While once high-performance computing was considered too demanding to utilize services in the cloud, a recent study suggests a growing number of high-performance users are now adopting cloud services.

According to the study, which was conducted by a cloud computing company at the recent Supercomputing Conference in November 2010, approximately 62 percent of high-performance computing users have experimented with managed cloud services.

Approximately 23 percent of respondents said they have outsourced applications and data to public cloud infrastructures. Thirty-six percent indicated they have utilized a private cloud in order to build shared infrastructure, while 15 percent stated they have deployed private cloud services to "burst" existing workloads.

"Until recently, high-performance computing users have been skeptical of implementing HPC cloud environments due to potential performance issues stemming from virtualization and the need for proper load balancing and fast compute times," said Randy Clark, CMO of the company that commissioned the study.

Cloud services are increasingly being deployed in a variety of settings. According to a recent report, the shift to cloud computing may change the way users relate to IT hardware, eventually eclipsing the traditional PC as the standard IT platform.