Hello,

I started looking at this cloud computing stuff couple of hours ago so I don't really know much so forgive me for my ignorance. Aside from all the "automatic reloads" to "reliability" stuff that I don't really care much, how much can these clouds scale? So far I have browsed nearly all the top providers and all I saw was dual core machines with 8 cpus, all in all about 10 to 30ghz computing power. I'm working with linearly scalable scientific applications and I'm wondering if I can rent a cloud of say 500 or 1000ghz for couple of hours? Or highly scalable just means "as long as you stay below 40ghz?"

Cheers

The individual nodes aren't meant to scale up to a lot of vCPUS. The scalability is in your ability to spawn 100 virtual machines on short notice.

Im thinking what you are more looking for is Grid computing perhaps? - If your applications are capable to be spanned over multiple servers?

Well, I would say cloud is the best for scientific applications. Grid might be harder to manage since you have to develop exactly for the grid you use. For example at Amazon, you can launch and pay only for the hours used. There are options starting from 1Gh to 30Ghz for CPU and 1.7Gb to 64Gb for RAM size. From the top of my head, the cheapest server is 8.5 cents, the most expensive 2.5 USD per hour. You can get Linux or Windows and can run your app there.