Abstract-Scientific computing requires a huge amount of computing resources, but not all the scientific researchers have an access to sufficient highend computing systems. Currently, Amazon provides a free tier account for cloud computing which could be used to build a virtual cluster. In order to investigate whether it is suitable for scientific computing, we first describe how to build a free virtual cluster using StarCluster on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Then, we perform a comprehensive performance evaluation of the virtual cluster built before. The results show that a free virtual cluster is easily built on Amazon EC2 and it is suitable for the basic scientific computing. It is especially valuable for scientific researchers, who do not have any HPC or cluster, to develop and test their prototype system of scientific computing without paying anything, and move it to a higher performance virtual cluster when necessary by choosing more powerful instance on Amazon EC2.

Three-dimensional geological modeling is the basis of exploration and exploitation of oil, gas, and solid mineral resources. It has vital significance for engineering decision-making and scientific management. A cross-platform geological modeling and visualization software with independent intellectual property rights is developed, based on the Qt framework. The 2.5D geological model is built with the Human-computer interaction (HCI) method, and converted to 3D model which displayed real time based on OpenGL. Software testing results show that the software can run on Windows, Linux platforms and meeting the basis requirement of cross-platform HCI modeling of the mineral exploration.