I think one of the things that will be very interesting to watch is the degree to which HPC applications and traditional scale out cloud infrastructure will influence each other in the coming months. It is not yet clear whether scientists will attempt to package or refactor more traditional applications (which require high bandwidth, closely-coupled communications in many important domains) in ways that are well-suited for the cloud infrastructure, or whether cloud infrastructure providers will offer options that provide hardware suited for them. I think if either happens, the former is more likely than the latter, and that could be the catalyst for a lot of interesting innovation in scientific computing.

I’d encourage you to keep an eye on insideHPC.com as well as HPCwire; insideHPC is my full time outlet for news related to the HPC ecosystem.

However, semantics are worth considering. So, the question that begs to be asked is – what exactly do we mean by the cloud? Is it predominantly webscale computing infrastructure – or data stores – or software frameworks – or a combination? or something else?

As a side note – what one does find intriguing is how jargon takes over mind space. Cloud is clearly in fashion. And we find several attempts to re-label everything “internet” as “cloud”. I can think of a few headlines – TV takes to the cloud (think Hulu, Vudu). Phones in the cloud (skype), Cloud-sourcing, recipes in the cloud,…