Département Artemis

Power Computation in the Cloud

XLcloud aims to define and demonstrate the principles of HPC as a Service (High Performance Computing) for all those applications that involve highly intensive calculations. XLcloud is designed as a collaborative tool that enables users to work together on highly sophisticated software in the Cloud, thus sidestepping the need for individuals to have to purchase expensive software on their own. XLcloud combines the expertise of companies and academics that are innovative in the field of high performance computer architectures and flow visualization HD/3D and video.

While many Internet-based applications are now available on the Cloud, high-performance applications still face a number of technological obstacles before they are cloud ready. For example, high performance applications often need large capacity processing, lots of storage and huge network bandwidth, needs that are difficult to meet in today’s Cloud. In developing HPC as a Service (HaaS), XLcloud has identified the following high performance applications involving research and industrial innovation:

• Research environments such as universities or technical institutes where high performance computing is a requirement,
• Online gaming (serious games) and simulation,
• Low-latency interactive video streaming,
• Data-intensive HPC-based applications,
• Online three-dimensional imaging for medical use.

Many of the above applications are inaccessible to small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) because of the levels of investment required and the budget pressure in IT. However, the model of cloud computing, by pooling resources and leveraging economies of scale, would allow these applications to find a true economic viability, create new ecosystems of suppliers and generate new uses to serving individuals and businesses.

 Partners: Bull SAS, Serviware, HPC-Project, CEA List, EISTI, ATEME, OW2-OSCi, INRIA RESO

 Project site: http://xlcloud.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

 Type: National

 Keywords: Cloud computing, Rendering, Compression, Visualisation

 Contact: Marius Preda