Paper ID: 2203.14188

mdx: A Cloud Platform for Supporting Data Science and Cross-Disciplinary Research Collaborations

Toyotaro Suzumura, Akiyoshi Sugiki, Hiroyuki Takizawa, Akira Imakura, Hiroshi Nakamura, Kenjiro Taura, Tomohiro Kudoh, Toshihiro Hanawa, Yuji Sekiya, Hiroki Kobayashi, Shin Matsushima, Yohei Kuga, Ryo Nakamura, Renhe Jiang, Junya Kawase, Masatoshi Hanai, Hiroshi Miyazaki, Tsutomu Ishizaki, Daisuke Shimotoku, Daisuke Miyamoto, Kento Aida, Atsuko Takefusa, Takashi Kurimoto, Koji Sasayama, Naoya Kitagawa, Ikki Fujiwara, Yusuke Tanimura, Takayuki Aoki, Toshio Endo, Satoshi Ohshima, Keiichiro Fukazawa, Susumu Date, Toshihiro Uchibayashi

The growing amount of data and advances in data science have created a need for a new kind of cloud platform that provides users with flexibility, strong security, and the ability to couple with supercomputers and edge devices through high-performance networks. We have built such a nation-wide cloud platform, called "mdx" to meet this need. The mdx platform's virtualization service, jointly operated by 9 national universities and 2 national research institutes in Japan, launched in 2021, and more features are in development. Currently mdx is used by researchers in a wide variety of domains, including materials informatics, geo-spatial information science, life science, astronomical science, economics, social science, and computer science. This paper provides an the overview of the mdx platform, details the motivation for its development, reports its current status, and outlines its future plans.

Submitted: Mar 27, 2022