UberCloud is paving the way for High Performance Computing as a Service info.theubercloud.com/case-studies-and-resources

1. The UberCloud
Paving the way to
High Performance Computing as a Service
International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing
December 9 – 12, Dresden, Germany
Wolfgang Gentzsch and BurakYenier

2. 2
What is High PerformanceComputing ?
Modeling theWorld on the computer …
… in order to allow forVirtual Product Development …
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3. 3
What is High PerformanceComputing ?
… or for scientific insights
Combustion
Cosmology
Climate
Environment

4. HPC is needed to stay competitive
The digital manufacturing engineer has
several options to use High Performance
Computing (HPC):
 HPC on the Desktop: over 90% of engineers
 HPC on the Server: about 5% of engineers
 HPC as a Service: in the Cloud; less than 1%

5. Workstations: limited capacity
Low-end workstations and PCs are important for
daily design and development work, but
 50+ % of users are dissatisfied with their computing
capacity*
 Too slow, e.g. jobs run over night or a whole week
 Too small, detailed geometry and physics don’t fit into
memory
 Number of jobs are limited which affects the quality of
the final result
* Source: http://www.compete.org/

6. Servers: expensive and complex
 For SMEs buying and using large scale HPC systems is
expensive and complex …

7. HPC as a Service: benefits & challenges
 It’s a new business and working paradigm
 Security, privacy, trust in service provider
 Intellectual property
 Software Licensing
 Heavy data transfers
HPC as a Service (in the Cloud) offers flexibility, business
agility, scaling up and down, pay-per-use, OPEX instead
CAPEX, but

8. UberCloud Poll about Roadblocks
The UberCloud, June 13, 2013

9. The UberCloud HPC Experiment
An open voluntary collaborative community
Objective:
Making HPC as a Service available, for everybody, on demand
How?
For SMEs and their engineering applications
to explore the end-to-end process
of using remote computing resources,
as a service, on demand, at your finger tip,
and learning how to resolve the roadblocks.

10. The End-User’s Benefits
 Free HPC Experiment, on-demand access to hardware, software,
and expertise, with a one stop resource access experience
 No hunting for resources in the complex emerging cloud market
 Professional match-making of end-users with service providers
 Perfectly tuned end-to-end, step-by-step process to HPC Cloud
 Lowering barriers & risks for frictionless entry into HPC Cloud
 Crowd sourcing: End-Users are building relationships with other
community members who actively contribute to improvements

11. How does the Experiment work?
 End-User joins the experiment
 Software Vendor joins
 We select a Team Expert
 We suggest a Resource Provider
 Team is ready to go
 … 22 steps on Basecamp’s virtual team office
 Finally, writing the Case Study

12. Where are we with the experiment
 Started August 2012: today 700+ participating organizations
and individuals
 Participants are from 66 countries
 Round 4 started September 1: already 42 new teams
 124 teams have been formed in Rounds 1-4
 Registration at:
www.hpcexperiment.com
www.cfdexperiment.com
www.compbioexperiment.com
www.bigdataexperiment.com

13. UberCloud community website
 With social network and crowdsourcing features
 Forums, Q&A, discussions, newsletters,…
 Feature stories: HPCwire, Desktop Engineering, Bio-IT…
 UberCloud University with free and paid lectures
 UberCloud HPC Experiment free trial service
 UberCloud Exhibit services directory
 List of currently ongoing team projects, their status, and
organizations involved
 List of upcoming conferences with ‘meet me there’ button

16. Finally:The UberCloud Marketplace
 Crowdsourcing and social networking: provide the
community web platform to discover and try HPCaaS,
address pain points, facilitate adoption, harness collective
intelligence
 Marketplace for computing-related services: 20+ million
engineers, scientists, and their service providers to list,
discover, try, and sell/purchase
 IaaS: HPC centers and public cloud providers
 SaaS: open source and commercial technical software
 Expertise: specialized HPC, software, technical know-how

17. Cloud Computing Reality Check
 UberCloud Compendium
sponsored by Intel
 25 selected use-cases from
60 teams in Rounds 1 & 2
 Google:
“ubercloud compendium”
17

18. Team 2: Simulating new probe design
for a medical device
Front End + 2 GPU Solvers In Action

19. Team 2:Team members
HPC Expert:
End User: Anonymous
Electromagnetic Simulation

20. Team 8: Multiphase flows within the
cement and mineral industry
Drying moist particles with hot gas

21. Team 8:Team members
Ingo Seipp
andTeam
End-User
CFX

22. Team 26: Simulating Stent
Deployment
Using SIMULIA’s Abaqus/Standard and RemoteViz
Software from NICE to run CAE on SGI Cyclone™
 Assessment of a fictitious balloon expandable stent design
 deployment, physiological pulsatile loading
 and both axial and radial compression.

23. Team 26-Team members
 End User: Anonymous: Global Designer and Manufacturer of Sterile
Medical Products
 CAE Software Provider: Matt Dunbar, Chief Architect, SIMULIA
 RemoteViz Software: NICE Desktop CloudVisualization (DCV)
 HPC/CAE Expert: Scott Shaw, Senior Applications Engineer, SGI
 Resource Provider: SGI Cyclone. Tony DeVarco, Senior Manager for
Strategic Partners and Cloud Computing at SGI. Eugene Kremenetsky,
Systems EngineeringTechnical Lead at SGI
 Team Mentor: Gregory Shirin from the HPC Experiment team

24. Challenges and Solutions
 Information security, privacy: protecting the users intellectual
property, guarding raw data, processing models, resulting
information: document security requirements, and select the
right provider
 Internet too slow for heavy data transfer: don’t ship every
result, just the important ones; use remote visualization; if
necessary, fedex the data over-night via USB hard drive
 Incompatible software licensing models: ISVs have to develop
compatible on-demand software licensing models

25. Challenges and Solutions, cont’d
 Reliability & availability of resource providers: seeking info on
reliability and availability of each vendor before partnering
 Lack of easy registration and administration: originally HPC
resources are not designed for the masses: use automated rules
based instant decision making capabilities
 Costs: pay-per-use billing can result in unpredictable cost,
project can easily run out of budget: use automated, policy
driven monitoring of usage and billing
 High expectations, disappointing results: we are in transition
to the cloud computing paradigm: Set goals that are
incrementally better than your current capabilities.

26. Why join?
 HPC as a Service is the next big thing, benefits are obvious
 HPC is complex; together it is easier to tackle the complexity
 Low entry barrier to HPC as a Service through an experiment
 Learning by doing; experimenting with no risk; no failure
 Becoming an active part of this growing community
 Exploring the end-to-end process and learning how this fits
into your research and/or business direction in the near future

27. ThankYou
http://www.hpcexperiment.com
http://www.cfdexperiment.com
http://www.compbioexperiment.com
http://www.bigdataexperiment.com