Serverless Science for Simple, Scalable, and Shareable Scholarship

Abstract

The adoption of computation- and data-intensive science, or eScience, makes research progress increasingly dependent on the availability, management, and use of sophisticated cyberinfrastructure. An unfortunate consequence is that researchers face increasingly burdensome demands for managing and maintaining cyberinfrastructure. The advent of virtualization and cloud computing has helped, by allowing outsourcing of some such tasks to reliable and scalable cloud providers. But much more progress is needed before we can create a research cyberinfrastructure that allows researchers to focus on creative thought rather than systems management. We examine here how the emerging paradigm of serverless computing, in which arbitrary functions can be dispatched seamlessly to scalable, secure, and reliable service providers, can move us in that direction. To demonstrate how serverless computing can transform scientific computing, we describe three serverless computing models: service-oriented computing, research automation, and function as a service, presenting illustrative case studies for each.