Going to the Moon via the Cloud

The wide availability of high-performance computing accessed through the cloud is fostering creativity worldwide, allowing the Firefly Aerospace startup, for example, to build a rocket for lunar flights using high-performance computing simulations.

Although the latest supercomputers can run 1 quadrillion calculations per second, they are prohibitively expensive and have huge space and power needs; less powerful but more nimble networked computer clusters can nearly equal supercomputers' capabilities.

Moreover, most cloud computing firms supply access to high-performance computing hardware with more versatility than supercomputers.

High-performance cloud computing company Rescale estimates roughly 12% of such computing is currently cloud-based, but that number—approximately $5.3 billion—is expanding 25% annually.

Cloud services are growing increasingly popular among research and development groups and applied science fields, amid spiking demand for computing resources.

From The New York Times
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