Cloud Computing

The Horizon Report (2009) lists cloud computing as a technology taking hold in one year or less [1]. I would argue that it has taken hold already, as the article lists several examples.


How does cloud computing play into quantum computer programming? I see it as having the potential for carrying out large simulations of quantum computers. With Cove [2] I ran into memory and computation constraints pretty early on when simulating just a few handfuls of qubits. Taking advantage of multiple cores is an obvious first step, but utilizing the cloud would allow for even larger simulations. Of course the problem has to be decomposed to take advantage of the cloud, but simulations essentially boil down to multiplication between large matrices.

Of course an obvious advantage of using the cloud is the pay as you go model. Instead of building up a lab to run my simulation, I can just take advantage of the cloud and avoid the expense and overhead of setting up this lab.

References
[1] NMC. (2009). Cloud Computing - The Horizon Project, New Media Consortium, 2009. Retrieved July 21, 2009, from http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Cloud-Computing
[2] https://cove.purkeypile.com/