High Performance Computing (HPC) over at Amazon Web Services.
From the website:
Researchers and businesses alike have complex computational workloads such as tightly coupled parallel processes or demanding network-bound applications, from genome sequencing to financial modeling. Regardless of the application, one major issue affects them both: procuring and provisioning machines. In typical cluster environments, there is a long queue to access machines, and purchasing dedicated, purpose-built hardware takes time and considerable upfront investment.
With Amazon Web Services, businesses and researchers can easily fulfill their high performance computational requirements with the added benefit of ad-hoc provisioning and pay-as-you-go pricing.
I have a pretty full Fall but want to investigate AWS for topic map experiments and possibly even delivery of content.
Yes, AWS has crashed and on that see: Why the AWS Crash is Good Thing by Chris Hawkins.
Anyone using it presently? War stories you want to share?