AWS Parallel Computing Service is Now Generally Available, Designed to Accelerate Scientific Discovery

Rhea-AI Summary

AWS has announced the general availability of AWS Parallel Computing Service, a managed service designed to simplify the setup and management of high performance computing (HPC) clusters on AWS. This service enables scientists and engineers to run scientific and engineering workloads at virtually any scale, accelerating innovation in areas like drug discovery, genomics, and weather applications.

Key features include:

• Easy cluster setup using Amazon EC2 instances
• Integration with Slurm, a popular open-source HPC workload manager
• Automatic scaling of simulations
• Reduced operational burden through managed service updates

The service is now available in multiple regions across the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific, with customers like Marvel Fusion, Maxar, RONIN, and The National Renewable Energy Laboratory already benefiting from its capabilities.

Positive

• Launch of AWS Parallel Computing Service, simplifying HPC cluster management
• Potential to accelerate scientific and engineering innovation across various industries
• Integration with popular tools like Slurm for easier adoption
• Automatic scaling capabilities for improved efficiency
• Reduced operational burden through managed service updates
• Wide availability across multiple AWS regions

Negative

• None.

Insights

Tech Expert

AWS's launch of the Parallel Computing Service marks a significant advancement in cloud-based High Performance Computing (HPC). This service addresses key challenges in scientific and engineering computing by simplifying cluster management and scaling. Key benefits include:

• Easier setup and management of HPC clusters using familiar tools like AWS Management Console
• Managed Slurm environment, reducing operational burden
• Automatic scaling of infrastructure, enabling scientists to focus on research rather than IT management
• Potential for accelerated innovation in fields such as drug discovery, genomics and renewable energy

For investors, this launch strengthens AWS's position in the growing cloud HPC market, potentially attracting more enterprise and research customers. The service's ability to reduce time-to-results and operational costs could drive increased cloud adoption and AWS usage, potentially impacting Amazon's cloud revenue positively in the long term.

Market Research Analyst

The launch of AWS Parallel Computing Service is strategically significant in the competitive cloud market. Key market implications include:

• Expansion of AWS's addressable market in scientific and engineering sectors
• Potential to capture market share from on-premises HPC solutions
• Increased competitiveness against other cloud providers in the HPC space

The service's ability to democratize access to high-performance computing could drive innovation across various industries, potentially creating new market opportunities. Early adoption by notable customers like Marvel Fusion and Maxar Intelligence suggests strong market interest. However, the impact on AWS's revenue may take time to materialize as organizations transition from existing HPC solutions. Investors should monitor adoption rates and customer testimonials in the coming quarters to gauge the service's market traction and potential financial impact on Amazon.

Financial Analyst

While the financial impact of AWS Parallel Computing Service isn't immediately quantifiable, it has potential long-term implications for Amazon's cloud business:

• Expansion into the HPC market could drive increased usage of AWS services
• Simplified management may attract new customers, potentially increasing market share
• The service could lead to higher-value, longer-term contracts with scientific and engineering organizations

However, investors should note that the HPC market, while growing, is specialized. The service's contribution to AWS's overall revenue may be gradual. Key financial metrics to watch in future earnings reports include:

• Growth in AWS revenue and operating income
• Changes in average revenue per customer
• Any disclosed metrics on HPC service adoption or usage

While this launch is strategically positive, its financial impact should be viewed as part of AWS's broader strategy to diversify and strengthen its cloud offerings.

New service allows customers who build scientific and engineering models to quickly and easily set up and manage high performance computing infrastructure to accelerate R&D at scale

Marvel Fusion, Maxar, RONIN, and The National Renewable Energy Laboratory among the first customers and partners to use AWS Parallel Computing Service

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced the general availability of AWS Parallel Computing Service, a new managed service that helps customers easily set up and manage high performance computing (HPC) clusters so they can run scientific and engineering workloads at virtually any scale on AWS. The service makes it easy for system administrators to build clusters using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, low-latency networking, and storage optimized for HPC workloads. With AWS Parallel Computing Service, scientists and engineers can quickly scale simulations to validate models and designs, while system administrators and integrators can build and maintain HPC clusters on AWS using Slurm, the most popular open-source HPC workload manager. This service accelerates innovation in areas such as fast-tracking drug discovery, uncovering genomic insights, building engineering designs, running weather applications, and building scientific and engineering models. To get started with AWS Parallel Computing Service, visit https://aws.amazon.com/pcs/.

AWS has a history of innovation in supporting HPC workloads. That history includes releases like the open source cluster orchestration toolkit AWS ParallelCluster, fully managed batch computing service AWS Batch, low latency network interconnect Elastic Fabric Adapter, Amazon FSx for Lustre high performance storage, and dedicated AMD, Intel, and Graviton-based HPC compute instances, the latter delivering up to 65% better price-performance over comparable compute optimized x86-based instances. Thousands of customers from a wide range of industries have migrated their HPC workloads to AWS to fast-track drug discovery, uncover genomic insights, maximize energy resources, and spin up supercomputers with millions of cores. Today AWS continues our innovation in HPC by releasing a fully-managed and comprehensive HPC service, which removes the undifferentiated heavy lifting of creating and managing HPC clusters.

AWS Parallel Computing Service is a new managed service that helps customers easily set up and manage HPC so they can run scientific and engineering workloads at virtually any scale on AWS. With AWS Parallel Computing Service, system administrators can use familiar tools including AWS Management Console, CLI, and SDK to deploy a managed Slurm environment. AWS Parallel Computing Service builds from open-source foundations that customers know and have experience with, and delivers a managed Slurm experience with the reliability and availability of AWS. AWS Parallel Computing Service significantly reduces the operational burden of managing a cluster and regularly delivers new capabilities and fixes through managed service updates with minimal to no downtime, eliminating the need to apply manual patches and rebuilding clusters to receive feature updates. Highly available APIs also help developers and ISVs create end-to-end HPC solutions on top of AWS, so they can focus on providing value-added features to their users and customers instead of worrying about managing infrastructure. AWS Parallel Computing Service enables customers of all sizes (e.g., startups, enterprises, or national labs) to easily create and manage HPC clusters with the scalability, reliability, and security of AWS. This means scientists and engineers using Slurm can easily migrate their existing on-premises workflows to AWS without re-architecting them—giving scientists and engineers access to cloud infrastructure that scales automatically. And administrators who want to unblock capacity or capability constraints for their end-users can spin up clusters in just minutes instead of months, to run their simulations to address the world’s most challenging problems.

“Developing a cure for a catastrophic disease, designing novel materials, advancing renewable energy, and revolutionizing transportation are problems that we just can’t afford to have waiting in a queue,” said Ian Colle, director, advanced compute and simulation at AWS. “Managing HPC workloads, particularly the most complex and challenging extreme-scale workloads, is extraordinarily difficult. Our aim is that every scientist and engineer using AWS Parallel Computing Service, regardless of organization size, is the most productive person in their field because they have the same top-tier HPC capabilities as large enterprises to solve the world’s toughest challenges, any time they need to, and at any scale.”

To get started, system administrators use the AWS Management Console to spin up a Slurm cluster securely and execute jobs in just a few clicks, compared to manual orchestration today. With CloudFormation support coming soon, customers will be able to build and deploy HPC clusters using infrastructure as code. AWS Parallel Computing Service is now available in the following Regions: US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Stockholm), Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo).

Marvel Fusion is a Germany-based fusion energy startup pursuing the creation of unlimited zero-emission energy. “We are excited that AWS Parallel Computing Service will deliver highly available and easy-to-upgrade HPC cluster management capabilities,” said Moritz von der Linden, CEO of Marvel Fusion. “It will empower our scientists and IT staff to take advantage of the latest AWS Parallel Computing Service capabilities in hours, instead of the weeks of planning and overhead previously needed.”

Maxar Intelligence provides secure, precise geospatial intelligence, enabling government and commercial customers to monitor, understand, and navigate our changing planet. “As a long-time user of AWS HPC solutions, we were excited to test the service-driven approach from AWS Parallel Computing Service,” said Travis Hartman, director of Weather and Climate at Maxar Intelligence. “We found great potential for AWS Parallel Computing Service to bring better cluster visibility, compute provisioning, and service integration to Maxar Intelligence’s WeatherDesk platform, which would enable the team to make their time-sensitive HPC clusters more resilient and easier to manage.”

RONIN is an Australia-based software company whose flagship HPC service provides a simple, intuitive web interface for researchers and scientists from leading academic and research institutions to easily run HPC simulations on AWS. "Democratizing HPC in the cloud by simplifying the user experience for researchers is our key mission," said Nathan Albrighton, CEO and founder of RONIN. "The introduction of AWS Parallel Computing Service greatly simplifies our ability to build and operate HPC environments using APIs and elevates the HPC capabilities we offer to our customers."

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is a leading institution focused on research, innovation, and strategic partnerships to deliver solutions for a clean energy economy. "The pursuit of scientific discovery comes with significant overhead associated with maintaining high performance computing infrastructure," said Michael Bartlett, cloud architect in the Advance Computing Operations Group at NREL. "AWS Parallel Computing Service has the potential to improve our research efficiency by reducing this overhead with its automated update and observability management features. In particular, new capabilities for automatic scaling and handling high-throughput computing tasks will allow us to efficiently process large datasets and complex simulations, ensuring that our scientists can prioritize solving high-priority problems."

About Amazon Web Services

Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 108 Availability Zones within 34 geographic regions, with announced plans for 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

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FAQ

What is AWS Parallel Computing Service and how does it benefit AMZN stock?

AWS Parallel Computing Service is a managed service that simplifies HPC cluster setup and management on AWS. It could positively impact AMZN stock by attracting more scientific and engineering customers, potentially increasing AWS revenue and market share in the HPC sector.

When did AWS Parallel Computing Service become generally available?

AWS Parallel Computing Service became generally available on the date of this press release, as announced by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Which industries can benefit from AWS Parallel Computing Service?

Industries that can benefit include pharmaceuticals (drug discovery), genomics, engineering, weather forecasting, and any field requiring complex scientific or engineering models and simulations.

How does AWS Parallel Computing Service impact AMZN's competitive position in cloud computing?

The service strengthens AMZN's position in the HPC market, potentially attracting more customers from scientific and engineering fields, and differentiating AWS from competitors in the cloud computing space.