Cloud Computing as a Utility

The CitadelSigma Xi

Topics

• What is cloud computing?• A peek at origins• Current and potential uses• Some issues• A future look

Cloud Computing

• You don’t know where• You don’t care where• You just expect a result• Reasonable delay is OK

• How is CC like water?

Other Utilities

It’s there when you need it.You don’t think about it much.Can’t/don’t want to live without it.

Computing without it…

Is like living in 1890...

OriginsEniac Numerical Computer 1946Contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and about 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed over 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8 by 3 by 100 feet took up 1800 square feet and consumed 150 kW of power.Shutdown in 1955.(Wikipedia, “ENIAC”)

CousinsMainframeBuilt to run reliably for decadesTransaction processingModern virtualized servers are mainframe computers

IBM Mainframe circa 1964

IBM z9 circa 2005

CousinsTitan Supercomputer 200 cabinets4,352 square feetDraws 480 V/cabinetPeak 8.2MW powerTotal 299,008 processor cores, Total 693.6 TiB of CPU and GPU RAMBlazing fast interconnectHearing protection required in server room (fan noise)

Wikipedia, “Titan_(supercomputer)

Titan circa 2011

Economics of (Super) Computing

-Kathy Yellick, NERSC, 2010

Single Server

Small Cluster

Cloud Computer

0102030405060708090

% Utilization

% Utilization

Want to See a Magic Trick?

Another flavor, called “MapReduce” made famous

A Rabbit…Really?!

really_big_data_list x,y;for i is 1 to n do

y[i] = f(x[i]);end;

really_big_data_list x,y;y = map(f, x);

Potential Uses

Current Uses

Enablers

• Low-cost commodity computing & information technology

• Reduced operational cost (energy/people)

What is that?

Social Issues

• Aggregation of Information• Abuse of trust• Security (Information) • Privacy• Intellectual Property• Control• Freedom to choose

Energy Issues

• In 2011, and average Google search used 0.3 watt-hrs of electricity

• Google data centers use 260 MW (2011) worldwide annually– enough to power 200,000 homes in Richmond, VA

or Irvine, CA– Only 2kWh per person

Our Own “Doodoo” Problem

• We create 2.5 exabytes (1018) of data every day

• We can’t process it fast enough• We can’t move it fast enough

Digitally, we are drowning in data we cannot use.

My vision for Cloud Computing…

• High-fidelity results

References1. “Exploring the future of cloud computing: riding the next wave of technology-

driven transformation”, http://www.weforum.org/reports/exploring-future-cloud-computing-riding-next-wave-technology-driven-transformation. Accessed April 15, 2014.

2. DeVry Advertisement, http://sme-blog.com/cloud-computing/the-anatomy-of-cloud-computing-infographic. Accessed April 15, 2014.

3. “Economics of Cloud Computing”, Booz, Allen,Hamilton, http://www.boozallen.com/media/file/Economics-of-Cloud-Computing.pdf. Accessed April 16, 2014.