Performance analysis of cloud as a feasible platform for HPC applications using radix sort algorithm

Cloud Computing has become a significant technology trend. It is going to reshape IT processes and IT marketplace in recent years. It is grabbing the people's attention rapidly as an opportune resource of computational power as well as priced Cloud computing services save pains to maintain the computational ambience. Gradually, Cloud is bringing new possibilities for a scientific community to build High Performance Computing platforms. Despite the wide benefits the Cloud offers, the question on everyone's mind is “Whether is Cloud a feasible platform for HPC applications?” This paper evaluates the performance of Amazon Cloud as well as non-Cloud using Parallel Radix Sort algorithm based on Open MPI. Message Passing Interface (MPI) is chosen as the efficient method to develop and implement the Parallel Radix Sort in the Cloud platforms. Most preceding works on High Performance Computing have been ported to the public Cloud background in various fields. The problems and challenges are assessed related to HPC on local and Cloud environments. Based on these experiment results, this paper will conclude the Cloud is a suitable platform for proposed type of HPC applications.