Lot of talk about the cloud -- software

You've probably heard a lot of talk about the cloud -- software and services that live on computers somewhere else nevertheless can be used by you over the Internet.

Well, moreover having warehouses full of goods, Amazon has buildings full of computer servers. And some of these machines are not occupied full time taking your orders. So Amazon has started to sell supercomputing time, and at strikingly reasonable prices.

Concept known as utility supercomputing

It is a concept known as utility supercomputing, and Mr. Stowe describes it as "the ability to create supercomputers in the cloud that people can use when they need them and turn off when they're done."

Mr. Stowe said there have been examples of "grid environments," where a university, for instance, might try to yoke at the same time multiple computers on its network to build a powerful computer.

To encourage researchers to use utility supercomputing, Cycle has instituted the Big Science Challenge, in which it gives eight hours of 30,000-core cluster time free to a researcher with a project "that might benefit humanity."