MCX Cloud – a modern, scalable, high-performance and in-browser Monte Carlo simulation platform with cloud computing

Significance Despite the ample progress made towards faster and more accurate Monte Carlo (MC) simulation tools over the past decade, the limited usability and accessibility of these advanced modeling tools remain key barriers towards widespread use among the broad user community. Aim An open-source, high-performance, web-based MC simulator that builds upon modern cloud computing architectures is highly desirable to deliver state-of-the-art MC simulations and hardware acceleration to general users without the need for special hardware installation and optimization. Approach We have developed a configuration-free, in-browser 3-D MC simulation platform – MCX Cloud – built upon an array of robust and modern technologies, including a Docker Swarm-based cloud-computing backend and a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) that supports in-browser 3-D visualization, asynchronous data communication, and automatic data validation via JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) schemas. Results The front-end of the MCX Cloud platform offers an intuitive simulation design, fast 3-D data rendering, and convenient simulation sharing. The Docker Swarm container orchestration backend is highly scalable and can support high-demand GPU MC simulations using Monte Carlo eXtreme (MCX) over a dynamically expandable virtual cluster. Conclusion MCX Cloud makes fast, scalable, and feature-rich MC simulations readily available to all biophotonics researchers without overhead. It is fully open-source and can be freely accessed at http://mcx.space/cloud .