Local life sciences to benefit from new cloud computing service

The Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS ) today launched its Computer Cloud, an initiative designed to give researchers faster and easier access to the Australian Grid network of high performance computers.

ARCS said that the service is the first of its kind in Australia, and possibly the world, and would allow researchers, including those with only very minimal technical skills, to conduct fast analysis of large and complex data via a standard PC and a simple point and click interface.

Compute Cloud also boasts a number of important automation features, including the location of available HPCs ( high performance computers ), the configuration and scheduling to sites with required and available applications as well as estimates for best job completion times.

ARC systems services manager Jim McGovern said life scientists are expected to be among the first major adopters of Cloud Compute, especially given the rapid growth of extremely computer intensive activities such as genome sequencing.

“Life sciences has become highly computing-intensive and we think that we can provide an environment that’s easier for researchers in this area”

Compute Cloud integrates with a number of popular software applications used throughut the scientific community such as MrBayes, POVRay, BLAST, R, Octave, BEAST and Underworld. ARCS said that it hoped to soon add other applications including mpiBLAST.

Indicating the degree to which Australian scientists are reliant on high speed computing, McGovern said that in the last 90 days Australian Grid processed 28,000 separate jobs amounting to around 70,000 CPU hours.

He addd that ARCS expects to expand the current resources of Cloud Compute through collaborations with international grid networks. It currently has a partnership with New Zealand research grid BeSTGrid.

Cloud Computer is being funded with $22 million from the federal government’s Super Science Initiative.