Federated Function as a Service for eScience

Yadu N. Babuji, Josh Bryan, Ryan Chard, Kyle Chard, Ian T. Foster, Ben Galewsky, Daniel S. Katz, Zhuozhao Li

Abstract: The function as a service paradigm aims to abstract the complexities of managing computing infrastructure for users. While adoption in industry has been swift, we have yet to see widespread adoption in academia. This is in part due to barriers such as the need to access large research data, diverse hardware requirements, monolithic code bases, and existing systems available to researchers. We describe funcX, a federated functionas-a-service platform that addresses important requirements for use of FaaS in research computing. We outline how funcX has been used in early science deployments.