IEEE Declares War on Cloud Computing Challenges

By Nicole Hemsoth

April 4, 2011

News emerging from any number of quarters , from vendors to trade associations, about cloud standardization is in no short supply. For the most part, a great deal of the progress taking place has come from isolated pockets with specific goals. Groups that tackle smaller strands of cloud computing do tend to collaborate but in the opinion of the IEEE, there is still a great deal of work to do to bring cloud computing into focus and open it to innovation.

The IEEE, the world’s largest professional association devoted to technological advancement, rallied its troops with a new, broad cloud computing initiative that was released this morning.  This effort has particular focus on lending some much-needed clarity to the complex topic as well as an extensive interoperability angle. The IEEE feels that their size, diversity and membership will drive progress toward a more robust cloud computing ecosystem—and are certainly not thinking small.

Two new standards development projects are at the heart of the announcement. IEEE P2301, which is called the “Draft Guide for Cloud Portability and Interoperability Profiles” and IEEE P2302, termed “Draft Standard for Intercloud Interoperability and Federation” will both work toward minimization of a fragmented, siloed ecosystem according to the Steve Diamond, who serves as chair of the cloud computing initiative.

In advance of this announcement we talked to David Bernstein, IEEE P2301 and IEEE P2302 WG chair, and managing director, Cloud Strategy Partners. He feels that cloud computing is a game-changing shift in computing and feels it is “one of three aspects of the ‘perfect storm’ of technology waves currently sweeping across humanity; the other two being massive deployment of very smart mobile devices and ubiquitous high-speed connectivity.” In the eye of this storm, of course, is the cloud, which will serve as the heart of both movements.

Bernstein understands full well that the size and scope of the project is incredibly dense and multi-faceted. As a former VP in Cisco’s CTO office running the company’s Cloud Lab and previous executive positions at AT&T, Siebel Systems, Pluris, and  InterTrust he also sees the challenge on the vendor side in tying all of the disparate aspects together. Furthermore, Bernstein notes that he has seen the historical processes of IEEE progress during his involvement as a key contributor for OpenSOA, OASIS, SCA, WS-I, JCP/J2EE and IEEE POSIX.

He compares the gravity of the IEEE’s cloud computing goals to the same process behind the construction of the global long distance and mobile phone systems and the public internet. On that level, it’s not hard to see how important the organization feels clouds will be in the future if they will take an effort on such gigantic scales.

A Standard to Procure Against

One of the first items on the IEEE cloud agenda is to clarify exactly what cloud are, how the ecosystem breaks down, and how to view and understand the principles behind decisions about adopting or creating technology.

IEEE P2301 will provide a roadmap for vendors, service providers, governments and others to aid users “in procuring, developing, building and using standards-based cloud computing products and services, enabling better portability, increased commonality and greater interoperability across the industry.”

Bernstein describes P2301 as an umbrella initiative that will form a guide for portability and interoperability via profiles to aid in procurement processes. He noted that within the U.S. government, there are some broad-based cloud computing goals but governments need to be able to procure against standards and as of now, there is too much fragmentation among the various efforts to create such guides.

He makes it clear that this procurement-driven effort is based on the need for a guide but that there is no aim to help users choose among vendors necessarily, but rather to present a guide that sets forth some specifics that allow room for users to decide.

Groups like the Cloud Security Alliance, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), and others have done some good work but what they put out is not cohesive enough to wrap procurement policies around since there isn’t the same version control, voting processes and other approval and refinement practice in place. To put this in light, Bernstein says that despite the solid efforts of a group like the Cloud Security Alliance, a government cannot say “let’s use the xx standard to procure against” which is a problem as the U.S. in particular moves forth on its Cloud First policy.

Bernstein says he remembers the old UNIX days when, like today, there were any number of groups with their missions and profiles and remarks that there are similarities with where we are in the cloud today. He claims that we are at a very natural point in the evolution of where a process like this should be with a great deal of splitting and divergence among groups, vendors and progress on standardization efforts.

In his opinion, the IEEE is really the only solution to bring together the many parties involved with standardization of clouds. This is in part due to the group’s global scope, their many publications and other forums and the volunteer nature that encourages member involvement and input. He says that “The Cloud Security Alliance is an ad-hoc association, the DMTF is a pay to play trade association and so is the Open Grid Forum. Inside we know the guys in all those organizations and there is some coordination” but he claims that of those there is not a top-tier international organization with the power to pull all of these disparate missions together.

An Eye on Interoperability

One of the “big picture” first projects the IEEE will tackle is rather dramatic in scope. The issues of federation, interoperability and portability are at the heart of hundreds of debates, papers and conference but it is a slow road to results—a point that Bernstein agrees with. He feels that even though the path to portability is a long one, the roadmap that the IEEE has followed with any other number of standards will apply here and will be hastened by widespread collaboration and information-sharing, some of which is enabled by the cloud.

IEEE P2302 will set forth the base “topology, protocols, functionality and governance required for reliable cloud-to-cloud interoperability and federation.” The working group behind this hopes to build an “economy of scale among cloud product and service providers that remains transparent to users and applications.” The organization hopes that this will help support the still-maturing cloud ecosystem while also pushing interoperability in the same vein as previous efforts like the SS7/IN for telephone systems did years ago.

“We’ve reached out to a lot of our members and companies and found that there’s a lot of confusion within our constituency about cloud computing, especially for those who are trying to advance the technology, either as service providers, researchers or governments. All stakeholders are having a difficult time sorting out the technologies and how they fit together in addition to just being able to identify the exact standards issues.”

Bernstein claims that while there are a number of organizations tackling specific issues in the broad cloud interoperability space, there have been a couple of items that have been overlooked or not given appropriate weight. These include, as he states, interoperability-related topics. While there are actually a number of different organizations with interoperability at their core, he says that his group seeks to fill gaps in such efforts. Weak areas include a lack of measurements, for instance.

He compares the IEEE approach to interoperability to the way other standards have been pushed through. He says, “Think about it—when you get off a plane somewhere your phone just works. That’s because under the covers year ago we worked to solve exactly that problem—tackling the mobile infrastructure topology to create roaming capabilities. Even with the internet there’s this same thing with DNS and peering with autonomous system numbers and routing protocols.

Bernstein continued to put cloud advancement in context, stating, “All of this took a long time but this is how innovation evolves… We’re at the same place with cloud today; there are walled gardens of great innovation—like then it is still something of closed system because that’s just how things develop.”
 

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire