HPCwire: Penguin Computing Offers On-Demand Cycles to University Partners

Since 1986 - Covering the Fastest Computers
in the World and the People Who Run Them

Translation Disclaimer

Subscribe | Sign In

Tabor Communications
Corporate Video

Leading HPC
Solution Providers

July 18, 2012

Penguin Computing Offers On-Demand Cycles to University Partners

FREMONT, Calif., July 18 -- Penguin Computing today announced partnerships with multiple universities to enable easy, quick and unbureaucratic on-demand access to scalable HPC compute resources for academic researchers.

"Penguin Computing has traditionally been very successful with HPC deployments in academic environments with widely varying workloads, many departments competing for resources and very limited budgets for capital expenses, a cloud based model for compute resources makes perfect sense," says Tom Coull, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Software and Services at Penguin Computing. "The new partnerships help academic institutions with a flexible cloud based resource allocation for their researchers. At the same time, they present an opportunity for IT departments to create an ongoing revenue stream by offering researchers from other schools access to their cloud."

Penguin has implemented three versions of academic HPC clouds:

Hybrid Clouds - Which are a local 'on-site' cluster configured to support the use of Penguin-on-Demand (POD) cloud resources as needed on a pay-as-you go basis. Local compute resources can be provisioned for average demand and utilization peaks can be offloaded transparently. This model lowers the initial capital expense and for temporary workload peaks excess cycles are provided cost effectively by Penguin's public HPC cloud. Examples of hybrid cloud deployments include the University of Delaware and Memphis University.

Channel Partnership - Between Universities and Penguin Computing, allow educational institutions to become distributors for POD compute cycles. University departments with limited access to compute resources for research can use Penguin's virtual supercomputer on-demand and pay-as-they-go, allowing them to use their IT budget for operational expenses. When departments use the university's HPC cloud, revenue can supplement funding for IT staff or projects, increasing the department's capabilities. This model has been successfully implemented at the California Institute for Technology in conjunction with Penguin's PODshell, a web-service based solution that supports the submission and monitoring of HPC cloud compute jobs from any Linux system with internet connectivity.

Combination Hybrid / Channel - The Benefits of the first two models have been successfully implemented at Indiana University (IU) as a public-private partnership. Penguin leverages the University's HPC facilities and human resources while IU benefits from fast access to local compute resources and Penguin's HPC experience. IU can use POD resources and provide compute capacity to other academic institutions. The agreement between IU and Penguin also has the support of a group of founding user-partners including the University of Virginia, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan who along with IU will be users of the new service. The POD collocation offers access through the high-speed national research network internet2 and is integrated with the XSEDE infrastructure that enables scientists to transparently share computing resources.

"This is a great example of a community cloud service," said Brad Wheeler, vice president for information technology and CIO at Indiana University. "By working together in a productive private-public partnership, we can achieve cost savings through larger scales while also ensuring security and managing the terms of service in the interests of researchers."

For more information about Penguin Computing's HPC compute resources, please visit www.penguincomputing.com .

About Penguin Computing

For well over a decade Penguin Computing has been dedicated to delivering complete, integrated Enterprise and High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions that are innovative, cost effective, and easy to use. Penguin offers a complete end-to-end portfolio of products and solutions including workstations, rackmount servers, custom server designs, power efficient rack solutions and turn-key clusters. Penguin also offers the Scyld suite of software products for efficient provisioning and infrastructure monitoring. Additionally, Penguin Computing on Demand (POD), is a public HPC cloud that is available instantly and as needed. Penguin counts some of the world's most demanding organizations as its customers, including AOL, Yelp, Caterpillar, Life Technologies, Dolby, Lockheed Martin and the US Air Force.

Penguin Computing is a registered trademark of Penguin Computing, Inc. Penguin on Demand is a pending trademark in the US. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

-----

Source: Penguin Computing

Share Options

Subscribe

Subscribe to HPCwire

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in join the Discussion

RSS Feeds

Feeds by Topic

Feeds by Industry

Feeds by Content Type

Subscribe to All Content

All

July 27, 2012

July 26, 2012

July 25, 2012

July 24, 2012

July 23, 2012

July 20, 2012

July 19, 2012

July 18, 2012

July 17, 2012

Feature Articles

Australia Goes on Spending Spree in Supercomputing Market

While governments in much of the rest of the world are wringing their hands over stagnant or shrinking R&D budgets, Australia is buying up HPC machinery like there is no tomorrow. Just this week, Cray, IBM, and SGI announced supercomputing deals that would send the vendors' latest and greatest HPC equipment Down Under. In this case, the three systems are headed to various research facilities in New South Wales and Western Australia.
Read more...

Lack of Minority Representation in Science and Engineering Endangering US Economic Health

Rapid growth in certain segments of the nation’s population is pushing the country’s educational challenges to a crisis level, while too many of the “precious few” under-represented minority students pursuing science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) disciplines are dropping out or changing majors, according to Richard Tapia, an internationally known mathematician.
Read more...

NASA Builds Supercomputing Lab for Earth Scientists

This week, NASA announced it would soon be launching a new HPC and data facility that will give Earth scientists access to four decades of satellite imagery and other datasets. Known as the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), the facility is being promoted as a "virtual laboratory" for researchers interested in applying supercomputing resources to studying areas like climate change, soil and vegetation patterns, and other environmental topics.
Read more...

Read more HPCwire features...

Around the Web

Soft Serve Supercomputing

Jul 27, 2012 | Scientists use latest Cray supercomputer to figure out how to make better ice cream.
Read more...

The 2012 Performance Per Watt Wars

Jul 26, 2012 | Chip analyst evaluates efficiencies of latest processors.
Read more...

XSEDE Gaining Speed as Year Two Begins

Jul 25, 2012 | Project directory John Towns outlines new projects, cites first-year successes.
Read more...

Oracle Ditches Supercomputing Language Project

Jul 24, 2012 | Fortress programming language gets axed by Ellison and company.
Read more...

Stephen Hawking Gets a New Supercomputer

Jul 23, 2012 | SGI newest shared-memory machine will help uncover the secrets of the universe.
Read more...

Read more headlines...

Michael Wolfe Webinar: PGI Accelerator with OpenACC

Join Michael for a look at the first PGI Accelerator Fortran and C compilers to include comprehensive support for OpenACC, the new open standard for programming accelerators using compiler directives.