Amazon Creates Cloud-Based Supercomputer
Seriously, is Skynet just one small step away?
Some tech genius at Amazon’s cloud computing complex figured out that the online shop and application hosting service could tie together its 300,000 online virtual computing cores, to perform, in concert, a whopping 240 trillion calculations/second, equivalent to 240 teraflops.
Using a platform known as Elastic Cloud Computer, Amazon’s cloud-based computing behemoth can be had at $1,279/hour, which might sound like a lot until you figure it would cost an organization millions to have their own supercomputer system. Who might want to take advantage of this service? Meteorological agencies, virologists, and anyone else who needs to crunch a ton of data, but whose organization might not want to put out the pocket change for in-house computing power.
By the way, for all its worth, Amazon’s supercomputer in the cloud isn’t the fastest. That honor is reserved for Japan’s K Computer system, which performs at 10 petaflops. While a teraflop is 1012 operations per second, a petaflop is 1015. In fact, Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computer is only the 42nd fastest supercomputer in the world.
One significant point to note: While other supercomputer systems are set aside to do their magnificient computing alone, Amazon’s system performed its incredible feats while handling all of its regular customer traffic using the same system.
Wow. Where is John Connor when we need him?
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