Dreyer, R., Wits University, South Africa; Crunch, Y., Wits University, South Africa; Dwolatzky, B., Wits University, South Africa
CrunchYard, a startup company established as part of the pre-incubator program run by the Joburg Center for Software Engineering (JCSE) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) provides high performance computing (HPC) in the cloud offering several benefits. HPC cloud solution allows engineers to run many small problems in parallel. HPC cloud solution can also be used for large complex simulations and optimization problems. The use of HPC cloud solution leads to the reduction or elimination of simulation assumptions and approximations. The current CrunchYard cluster includes several packages such as FEKO, OpenFOAM, CP2K and SuperNEC that are available to all users. The use of a cloud-based system on a pay-per-use basis allows large organizations to budget per project more effectively such as the geosciences services department at Anglo American is using the CrunchYard platform to run the H3DTD code.