CIQ and Google Cloud are partnering to put High Performance Computing (HPC) in the cloud in the reach of more people. The importance and impact of HPC is only growing. Regardless of whether you view HPC as a vertical market or a horizontal technology across many segments, HPC simulation and modeling are at the heart of innovation. Tapping into HPC reaps big benefits for those who employ it. CIQ and Google Cloud are committed to helping people and organizations have paths to utilize computing to fulfill their mission.

Rocky Linux is hot in HPC

It’s not a big surprise to me to see that Rocky Linux has skyrocketed in popularity as the OS for HPC solutions. Rocky Linux fills the void of CentOS, which was the predominant OS of choice across HPC, and many of the founders and contributors of CentOS helped create the Rocky Linux project. It has HPC in its DNA. 

Rocky Linux has become a top migration target with no more CentOS beyond version 7. Furthermore, the last updates for CentOS 7 are occurring in mid 2024. Hyperion reported last November that of organizations they surveyed that were using CentOS, over 20% already planned a move to Rocky. We’ve also seen that Rocky Linux now powers numerous supercomputers including big systems at TACC and HLRS. Rocky Linux is a go-to platform. 

Part of that reason is the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF). CIQ is a founding member of RESF and helped create the organization to house Rocky Linux. That means Rocky Linux is owned by the community through RESF as an independent organization. RESF has already ensured that Rocky Linux distributions will have a 10 year lifecycle. Organizations can rely on Rocky Linux as their foundation.

CIQ and Google Cloud partnership

CIQ and Google partnered to make Rocky Linux available in Google Cloud shortly after the launch of the OS. As part of this partnership, both organizations helped stand up a cloud special interest group (SIG) within RESF. From this SIG and the partnership, distributions of Rocky Linux were created and are curated specifically for Google Cloud. Most prominently, this includes support for the Google Virtual NIC within Rocky Linux. This collaboration has resulted in optimized images available in Google Cloud for all of Linux computing.

HPC with Rocky and Google Cloud

The expansion of Rocky Linux continues with Google Cloud as a way to utilize HPC for innovation. Rocky Linux images are now available in Google Cloud for both single-instance and multi-instance execution. For clarity, single-instance is inferring the equivalent of single node, and multi-instance infers multi-node HPC clustering. This means access for running simulation codes across many domains like research computing, commercial manufacturing, and life sciences. Whether you are augmenting compute resources or going all-in on cloud, CIQ and Google have helped provide more paths to leverage HPC.