1Advanced Virtualization Techniques for High Performance

Abstract—With the advent of virtualization and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), the broader scientific computing community is considering the use of clouds for their scientific computing needs. This is due to the relative scalability, ease of use, advanced user environment customization abilities, and the many novel computing paradigms available for data-intensive applications. However, there is still a notable gap that exists between the performance of IaaS when compared to typical high performance computing (HPC) resources, limiting the applicability of IaaS for many potential users. This work proposes to bridge the gap between supercomputing and clouds using a few key aspects. First, we evaluate current hypervisors and their viability to run HPC workloads within current infrastructure. Next, we illustrate a mechanism to enable advanced accelerators such as GPUs in a Virtual Machine that can significantly enhance scientific computing problems. Furthermore, we are also able to support high speed, low latency inter-node communication through the use of InfiniBand within virtual machines. Upon evaluating these newfound features and leveraging the system within the OpenStack environment, we illustrate that cloud computing can perform at near-native speeds and support a broad range of scientific computing problems as never before. I