AWS Parallel Computing Service Designed to Speed Scientific Discovery

Amazon Web Services, Inc. makes available AWS Parallel Computing Service, a new managed service that helps customers set up and manage high-performance computing (HPC) clusters to run scientific and engineering workloads at nearly any scale on AWS. The service enables system administrators to build clusters using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, low-latency networking, and storage optimized for HPC workloads.

With AWS Parallel Computing Service, scientists and engineers can scale simulations to validate models and designs, while system administrators and integrators can build and maintain HPC clusters on AWS using Slurm, an open-source HPC workload manager. This service accelerates ability to build engineering designs and building scientific and engineering models, and more.

AWS Parallel Computing Service builds from familiar open-source foundations and delivers a managed Slurm experience with availability of AWS. AWS Parallel Computing Service is said to reduce the operational burden of managing a cluster and regularly delivers new capabilities and fixes through managed service updates with minimal to no downtime. Highly available application programming interfaces also help developers and independent software vendors create end-to-end HPC solutions on top of AWS.

AWS Parallel Computing Service enables customers of all sizes (e.g., startups, enterprises, or national labs) to create and manage HPC clusters with the scalability and security of AWS, the company reports. This means scientists and engineers using Slurm can easily migrate their existing on-premises workflows to AWS without re-architecting them. And administrators who want to unblock capacity or capability constraints for their end-users can spin up clusters in minutes instead of months, to run their simulations.

“Managing HPC workloads, particularly the most complex and challenging extreme-scale workloads, is extraordinarily difficult,” says Ian Colle, director, advanced compute and simulation at AWS.  “Our aim is that every scientist and engineer using AWS Parallel Computing Service, regardless of organization size, is the most productive person in their field because they have the same top-tier HPC capabilities as large enterprises to solve the world’s toughest challenges, any time they need to, and at any scale.”

To get started, system administrators use the AWS Management Console to spin up a Slurm cluster securely and execute jobs in a few clicks, compared to manual orchestration today. With CloudFormation support coming soon, customers will be able to build and deploy HPC clusters using infrastructure as code. AWS Parallel Computing Service is now available in the following Regions: U.S. East (Ohio), U.S. East (N. Virginia), U.S. West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Stockholm), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo).

To get started with AWS Parallel Computing Service, visit https://aws.amazon.com/pcs/.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.