Wolfram Details Mathematica EC2 Cloud Offering

Wolfram Research; developers of the very popular line of Mathematica computational applications, have announced the availability of Mathematica on Amazon EC2.

Computational and analytical applications are the latest packaged and grid software offerings to make the transition over to a cloud computing model. Mathematica’s cloud computing offering is intended for its entire customer base, but will be especially appealing to power Mathematica Notebook users like scientists and engineers. These type of users often run out of compute power on their Notebooks when executing complex calculations and Mathematica in the Cloud will allow them to scale up quickly to the cloud.

Wolfram differentiates the EC2 cloud offering from its existing parallell computing offerings for gridMathematica by the fact that it is a pure Pay as You Go service and pricing will be metered and billed by compute cycles consumed. Wolfram Research has partnered with Nimbus Services for the initial rollout of the service. Nimbus will enable the Mathematica Cloud service to access differing HPC systems, such as Mosso or Flexiscale.

Mathematica is not the first major player out of the gate with a cloud based computational solution on EC2 however as Mathworks released a whitepaper with a blueprint for individuals/groups interested in running Matlab on EC2.

1. Lukas Grün , December 5, 2008:

   Analytical and Computational analysis is a good fit for Cloud Computing.

   I see more Universities or R&D Departments using this model because as more cloud service providers offer it the cost of computing cycles will become very cheap.

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2. Kurt , December 5, 2008:

   I wonder if Wolfram will use the CCT at the University of Illinois Champaign for a Cloud?

   http://engineering.illinois.edu/news/index.php?xId=074108960742

   Since they are both based in Champaign (Go Illini!) and Wolfram has a number of U of I alumni on its staff that would be a good fit

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   Ameed Taylor reply on December 5th, 2008 :

   Lukas,
   Its funny but in a way Computational Analysis and Analytics take the net back to its roots and original usage. I agree that metered pricing should drop substantially for cloud computing cycles soon as there will be a lot more competition for EC2 in the near future

   Kurt,
   Are you a UofI grad or alumni?
   Yes the CCT would be a very good platform for a application like Mathematica. But I think the CCT is still a few months away from launching from last that I heard.

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   Kurt reply on December 11th, 2008 :

   @Ameed Taylor,
   Yep, I graduated from U of I in 2002. I went to U of I Chicago my first year and transferred down to Champaign to finish my degree