  We describe the development of a scientific cloud computing (SCC) platform
that offers high performance computation capability. The platform consists of a
scientific virtual machine prototype containing a UNIX operating system and
several materials science codes, together with essential interface tools (an
SCC toolset) that offers functionality comparable to local compute clusters. In
particular, our SCC toolset provides automatic creation of virtual clusters for
parallel computing, including tools for execution and monitoring performance,
as well as efficient I/O utilities that enable seamless connections to and from
the cloud. Our SCC platform is optimized for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
(EC2). We present benchmarks for prototypical scientific applications and
demonstrate performance comparable to local compute clusters. To facilitate
code execution and provide user-friendly access, we have also integrated cloud
computing capability in a JAVA-based GUI. Our SCC platform may be an
alternative to traditional HPC resources for materials science or quantum
chemistry applications.
