Startup Sylabs Inc. today announced the commercial release of its open-source Singularity container engine software for high-performance computing.

Called Singularity Pro, the platform has been optimized specifically for running software containers on HPC infrastructure, or supercomputers that aggregate computing power in a way that delivers much higher performance than one could get out of a typical desktop computer or workstation.

They’re used to solve large problems in science, engineering, or business. Software containers are a new kind of infrastructure that allows DevOps teams, which combine developer and information technology operations teams, to build applications just once and run them anywhere, without worrying about the underlying hardware or operating system.

In a blog post, Sylabs founder and Chief Executive Officer Gregory Kurtzer explained that container software such as the Docker Engine isn’t suitable for HPC users because it’s focused more on microservices, or applications built out of smaller software components, whereas HPC involves processing jobs instead of services.

Kurtzer previously worked at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he built the Linux-based CentOS operating system. He founded Sylabs in April 2016 at the same time as the initial release of the free and open-source Singularity platform. He said in his post that he views Singularity as the Docker for HPC environments, and he plans to follow Docker Inc.’s business model of leading the open-source project and creating a paid, enterprise version of the software.

Kurtzer said Singuarlity Pro is designed for HPC use cases and also emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning and data analytics, all of which require massive amounts of computing power.

“These applications carry data-intensive workloads that demand HPC-like resources, and as more companies leverage data to support their businesses, the need to properly containerize and support those workflows has grown substantially,” Kurtzer wrote.

Just like Docker, Singularity Pro can also work with popular container orchestration programs such as Kubernetes and Apache Mesos, in addition to Microsoft Corp.’s Azure Batch tool for scheduling cloud-based workloads.

Image: Sylabs