THOR: A Transparent Heterogeneous Open Resource framework

Heterogeneous computing which includes mixed architectures with multi-core CPUs as well as hardware accelerators such as GPU hardware, is needed to satisfy future computational needs and energy requirements. Cloud computing currently offers users whose computational needs vary greatly over time, a cost-effect way to gain access to resources. While the current form of cloud-based systems is suitable for many scenarios, their evolution into a truly heterogeneous computational environments is still not fully developed. This paper describes THOR (Transparent Heterogeneous Open Resources), our framework for providing seamless access to HPC systems composed of heterogeneous resources. Our work focuses on the core module, in particular the policy engine. To validate our approach, THOR has been implemented on a scaled-down heterogeneous cluster within a cloud-based computational environment. Our testing includes an Open CL encryption/decryption algorithm that was tested for several use cases. The corresponding computational benchmarks are provided to validate our approach and gain valuable knowledge for the policy database.