Centraliens - N°628 - La revue des Arts et Manufactures - Août/Septembre 2013 - 46

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Cloud Computing

and High Performance Computing
For a lot of people (even
scientists and engineers)
cloud computing is still
a strange new paradigm.
Some of them are even
convinced that it is a new
word for grid computing ! In
fact, cloud computing
is a new key discipline of
high-performance computing
(HPC) sophisticated IT
technologies in order to
treat some of the major HPC
challenges and enabling
trusted technical computing
solutions for 21st century
customers.

loud computing is a technology that
uses the Internet and central remote
servers to maintain data and applications. Cloud computing allows
consumers and businesses to use applications
without installation and access their personal files at any computer with Internet access. This technology allows for much more
efficient computing by centralizing storage,
memory, processing, and bandwidth. Cloud
computing provides ICT resources in a dynamic and scalable manner over a network.
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the five essential characteristics of the cloud are the following : ondemand self-service, broad network access,
resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured services. The applications of cloud computing are huge and impact nearly all sectors.
For example, some automotive firms are
convinced that the future lies in cloud computing: in some recent vehicles, the software
used in the vehicle online applications system
is not stored in the vehicle but runs off the
firm backend. The advantage of this is that
the applications can be continually updated
in the cloud and new applications released to
the automotive firm’s customers without the
need of visiting a workshop!
This time these tremendous civil applications
are not derived from military applications
such as the Internet or GPS. Cloud computing is only beginning to be used in Military
Intelligence Fusion (MIF).
The advantages of cloud computing are already applied to MIF in the sharing of data and
application.
Other known uses of cloud computing in the
U.S. military sector are the following: the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE)
used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)
and the U.S. military owned private cloud
computing to Afghanistan. Nevertheless,
cloud computing technology has not yet been
effectively exploited in military embedded
applications because of performance and correctness constraints. Some of these strategic
embedded military applications are as follows:
critical command and control systems, in-field
data and information analysis, image data processing onboard missiles, UAVs …

The main challenges of cloud computing are
the need for wide bandwidth, concern for
security, concern for malfunctions of the
cloud, legal and political issues and concern
for the rights of users.
Cloud computing will definitely be relevant
for new-generation high safety level critical
systems (for both civil and military applications) because of the following important
advantages: unlimited IT infrastructure flexibility and increased mission flexibility.
Another strategic application of cloud computing is the treatment of the data wave.
How to manage and derive continual value
from your data? In terms of ``Big Data’’, biology will pass physics within two years. For
example, next-generation sequencers produce between six and eight TeraBytes (TB)
of data per day! The challenges in next-generation genome centers are managing and
processing oceans of data (TBs per day from
multiple instruments, fast access and processing) and providing more services at a lower
cost per genome.
Many other industries are facing challenges
in their development projects: developing
medical equipment, defining complex
industrial processes in metallurgy, tuning
financial. These projects have in common
the difficulty to build accurate models of the
systems they are dealing with. They might
involve sophisticated algorithms, timing
and safety constraints, performance of their
execution or complex integration in the environment. Cloud computing allows to align
these industries software on new infrastructures and to give all the performance they
can expect from large scale parallel and distributed computing.
n
Jacques Duysens,
General Manager - Chief Operating Officer,
SILKAN

Centraliens no628 [août/septembre 201
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Centraliens - N°628 - La revue des Arts et Manufactures - Août/Septembre 2013

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