Slideshow: Amazon's Case For Enterprise Cloud Computing
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The GPU Cluster Instance is also the Elastic Compute Cloud's biggest processing unit. It is priced at $2.10 an hour, compared to the Cluster Compute Instance's $1.60 an hour. A Small Standand Instance is 8.5 cents an hour, running Linux. The cluster instances are available to run Linux only; Windows is not being offered at this time.
High performance computing customers can use the Cluster GPUs to line up "massive parallel processing power," De Santis said in the announcement. Workloads that lend themselves to parallel processing could be speeded up by using the GPU Cluster Instances. Such workloads might include processing of masses of weather information or seismic data used in oil and gas exploration.
The new instance would be useful in rendering professional or scientific visualizations with masses of data behind them, doing large-scale floating point calculations or building simulations.
Having Cluster GPU computing available at an hourly charge may open a path to small and medium sized companies that in the past may have spurned such resources as too expensive to install themselves or too difficult to get on the waiting list of an academic or research high performance computing cluster system. "We are looking forward to seeing the innovation this will enable," De Santis added.
The Cluster GPU is based on NVIDIA Tesla M2050 processors, a general purpose processor derived from a graphics-oriented predecessor.
One early user is Calgary Scientific, a supplier of advanced medical imaging software. "For patients in critical care scenarios, every second cut from diagnosis to treatment can lead to a more positive outcome," said Pierre Lemire, CTO. The Amazon Cluster GPU instances "will help Calgary Scientific bring imagery from patients in need to the required medical professional with minimum infrastructure expense," he added.
