an inquiry report on grid computing
TRANSCRIPT
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Jeevan Kumar Vishwakarman. All rights reserved. This is a collection of information availed
from various sources including internet, text books, and newspaper publications. This collection
is a sole work of the Mr. Jeevan Kumar Vishwakarman and any kind of reuse of this work in any
form is prohibited, and all the rights on this collection is reserved to him and violation of this
prohibition is punishable under the laws whichever is applicable.
1st M.C.A |M9 MCA AA 0010Sree Saraswathy Thyagaraja College, Thippampatti, Pollachi.
For Personal Contact Use These.
Karampotta, Kozhinjampara,
Palakkad. 678555
[email protected] | vishnudhoodhan@yahoo.
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CONTENTS
1. A Gentle Introduction To Grid Computing And Technologies ............. 12. What Is Grid Computing? ......................................................................... 13. Grid Computings Ancestors................................. .................................... 24. The Architecture ......................................................................................... 35. Five Big Ideas .............................................. ................................................ 46. Grids Versus Conventional Supercomputers .......................................... 57. Virtual Organizations................................................................................. 6
From passenger jets to chemical spills .................................................................... 68. The Hardware ............................................. ................................................ 69. Design Considerations And Variations ................................................ .... 710. CPU Scavenging ......................................................................................... 811. History ......................................................................................................... 912. Father of the Grid ....................................................................................... 913. Current Projects And Applications......................................................... 15
Fastest virtual supercomputers ............................................................................ 1714. Definitions ................................................................................................. 17
But what does "high performance" mean? ........................................................... 18 15. The Death Of Distance ................................................. ............................ 18
Faster! Faster! .. ................................................................................................... 1916. Secure Access .............................................. .............................................. 19
Security and trust ................................................................................................ 2017. Resource Use ............................................... .............................................. 20
Middleware to the rescue ...... ...... ...... ........ ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ...... ...... ...... ...... 2118. Resource Sharing ...................................................................................... 2119. But Would You Trust Your Computer To A Complete Stranger? ....... 21
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20. Open Standards ........................................................................................ 2221. Who Is In Charge Of Grid Standards? ............................... ..................... 2222. The Middleware ....................................................................................... 23
Agents, brokers and striking deals........ ...... ...... ....... ...... ...... ...... ....... ....... ..... ...... .. 23Delving inside middleware .................................................................................. 23
23. Globus Toolkit .......................................................................................... 24Globus includes programs such as:....................................................................... 25
24. National Grids .......................................................................................... 2625. International Grids .................................................................... ............... 2826. High-Throughput Problems ............................ ........................................ 3227. High-Performance Problems ........................... ........................................ 3328. Grid Computing In 30 Seconds ............................................................... 3429. The Dream ................................................................ ................................. 3430. ''Gridifying'' Your Application ................................................................ 3531. Computational Problems ................................................................ ......... 35
Parallel calculations: ............................................................................................ 35Embarrassingly parallel calculations: ................................................................... 36Coarse-grained calculations: ................................................................................ 36Fine-grained calculations: .................................................................................... 36High-performance vs. high-throughput ................................................................ 36And grid computing..? ............ ...... ....... ....... ....... ....... ........ ....... ...... ...... ...... ....... .. 36
32. Breaking Moores Law? ........................................................................... 37Nice Idea, But... ................................................................................................... 37
33. More On Moore's Law ................................................. ............................ 3834. Works Cited .............................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
Index ..................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
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A Gentle Introduction To Grid Computing And Technologies
Grid is an infrastructure that involves the integrated and collaborative use of
computers, networks, databases and scientific instruments owned and managed by
multiple organizations. Grid applications often involve large amounts of data and/orcomputing resources that require secure resource sharing across organizational
boundaries. This makes Grid application management and deployment a complex
undertaking. Grid middlewares provide users with seamless computing ability and
uniform access to resources in the heterogeneous Grid environment. Several software
toolkits and systems have been developed, most of which are results of academic
research projects, all over the world. This paper presents an introduction to Grid
computing and discusses two complimentary Grid technologies: Globus developed by
researchers from Argonne National Laboratory and University of Southern California,
USA; and Gridbus by researchers from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Globus
primarily focuses on providing core Grid services whereas Gridbus focuses on providing
user-level Grid services in addition to utility computing model for management of grid
resources.
What Is Grid Computing?
grid computing allows the virtualization of distributed computing and data resources
such as processing, network bandwidth and storage capacity to provide a unique system image,
granting users and applications access to vast it capabilities.
Although "the grid" is still just a dream... Grid computing is already reality.
Imagine several million computers from all over the world, and owned by
thousands of different people. Imagine they include desktops, laptops, supercomputers,
data vaults, and instruments like mobile phones, meteorological sensors and telescopes...
Now imagine that all of these computers can be connected to form a single, huge
and super-powerful computer! This huge, sprawling, global computer is what many
people dream "the grid" will be.
"The grid" takes its name from an analogy with the electrical "power grid". The
idea was that accessing computer power from a computer grid would be as simple as
accessing electrical power from an electrical grid".
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Grid Computings Ancestors
Grid computing didn't just come out of nowhere. It grew from previous efforts
and ideas, such as those listed below:
Grid computing's immediate ancestor is "metacomputing", which datesback to around 1990. Metacomputing was used to describe efforts to
connect us supercomputing centers. Larry smarr, a former director of the
national center for supercomputing applications in the us, is generally
credited with popularizing the term.
Fafner and i-way were cutting-edge metacomputing projects in the us,both conceived in 1995. Each influenced the evolution of key grid
technologies.
Fafner (factoring via network-enabled recursion) aimed to factorize verylarge numbers, a challenge very relevant to digital security. Since this
challenge could be broken into small parts, even fairly modest computers
could contribute useful power. Many fafner techniques for dividing and
distributing computational problems were forerunners of technology
used for seti@home and other "cycle scavenging" software.
I-way (information wide area year) aimed to link supercomputers usingexisting networks. One of i-way's innovations was a computational
resource broker, conceptually similar to those being developed for gridcomputing today. I-way strongly influenced the development of the
globus project, which is at the core of many grid activities, as well as the
legion project, an alternative approach to distributed supercomputing.
Grid computing was born at a workshop called "building a computationalgrid", held at argonne national laboratory in september 1997. Following
this, in 1998, ian foster of argonne national laboratory and carl kesselman
of the university of southern california published "the grid: blueprint for a
new computing infrastructure", often called "the grid bible". Ian foster had
previously been involved in the i-way project, and the foster-kesselman
duo had published a paper in 1997, called "globus: a metacomputing
infrastructure toolkit", clearly linking the globus toolkit with its
predecessor, metacomputing.
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Grid computing is a phrase in distributed computing which can have several
meanings:
A local computer cluster which is like a "grid" because it is composed ofmultiple nodes.
Offering online computation or storage as a metered commercial service,known as utility computing, "computing on demand", or "cloud
computing".
The creation of a "virtual supercomputer" by using spare computingresources within an organization.
The creation of a "virtual supercomputer" by using a network ofgeographically dispersed computers. Volunteer computing, which
generally focuses on scientific, mathematical, and academic problems, is
the most common application of this technology.
These varying definitions cover the spectrum of "distributed computing", and
sometimes the two terms are used as synonyms. This article focuses on distributed
computing technologies which are not in the traditional dedicated clusters; otherwise,
see computer cluster.
Functionally, one can also speak of several types of grids:
Computational grids (including CPU scavenging grids) which focusesprimarily on computationally-intensive operations.
Data grids or the controlled sharing and management of large amounts ofdistributed data.
Equipment grids which have a primary piece of equipment e.g. Atelescope, and where the surrounding grid is used to control the
equipment remotely and to analyze the data produced.
The Architecture
Grid architecture is the way in which a grid has been designed.
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A grid's architecture is often described in terms of "layers", where each layer has
a specific function. The higher layers are generally user-centric, whereas lower layers are
more hardware-centric, focused on computers and networks.
The lowest layer is the network, which connects grid resources. Above the network layer lies the resource layer: actual grid resources,
such as computers, storage systems, electronic data catalogues,
sensors and telescopes that are connected to the network.
The middleware layer provides the tools that enable the variouselements (servers, storage, networks, etc.) To participate in a grid. The
middleware layer is sometimes the "brains" behind a computing grid!
The highest layer of the structure is the application layer, whichincludes applications in science, engineering, business, finance and
more, as well as portals and development toolkits to support the
applications. This is the layer that grid users "see" and interact with.
The application layer often includes the so-called serviceware, which
performs general management functions like tracking who is
providing grid resources and who is using them.
Five Big Ideas
Grid computing is driven by five big areas:
1. Resource sharing: global sharing is the very essence of grid computing.2. Secure access: trust between resource providers and users is essential,
especially when they don't know each other. Sharing resources conflicts
with security policies in many individual computer centers, and on
individual pcs, so getting grid security right is crucial.
3. Resource use: efficient, balanced use of computing resources is essential.4. The death of distance: distance should make no difference: you should be
able to access to computer resources from wherever you are.
5. Open standards: interoperability between different grids is a big goal, andis driven forward by the adoption of open standards for grid
development, making it possible for everyone can contribute
constructively to grid development. Standardization also encourages
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industry to invest in developing commercial grid services and
infrastructure.
Grids Versus Conventional Supercomputers
"distributed" or "grid computing" in general is a special type of parallel
computing which relies on complete computers (with onboard CPU, storage, power
supply, network interface, etc.) Connected by a conventional network interface, such as
ethernet or the internet. This is in contrast to the traditional notion of a supercomputer,
which has many CPUs connected by a local high-speed computer bus.
The primary advantage of distributed computing is that each node can be
purchased as commodity hardware, which when combined can produce similar
computing resources to a many-CPU supercomputer, but at lower cost. This is due to the
economies of scale of producing commodity hardware, compared to the lower efficiency
of designing and constructing a small number of custom supercomputers. The primary
performance disadvantage is that the various CPUs and local storage areas do not have
high-speed connections. This arrangement is thus well-suited to applications where
multiple parallel computations can take place independently, without the need to
communicate intermediate results between CPUs.
The high-end scalability of geographically dispersed grids is generally favorable,
due to the low need for connectivity between nodes relative to the capacity of the public
internet. Conventional supercomputers also create physical challenges in supplying
sufficient electricity and cooling capacity in a single location. Both supercomputers and
grids can be used to run multiple parallel computations at the same time, which might
be different simulations for the same project, or computations for completely different
applications. The infrastructure and programming considerations needed to do this on
each type of platform are different, however.
There are also differences in programming and deployment. It can be costly and
difficult to write programs so that they can be run in the environment of a
supercomputer, which may have a custom operating system, or require the program to
address concurrency issues. If a problem can be adequately parallelized, a "thin" layer of
"grid" infrastructure can cause conventional, standalone programs to run on multiple
machines (but each given a different part of the same problem). This makes it possible to
write and debug programs on a single conventional machine, and eliminates
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complications due to multiple instances of the same program running in the same shared
memory and storage space at the same time.
Virtual Organizations
Virtual organizations (vos) are groups of people who share a data-intensive goal.
To achieve their mutual goal, people within a vo choose to share their resources,
creating a computer grid. This grid can give vo members direct access to each other's
computers, programs, files, data, sensors and networks. This sharing must be controlled,
secure, flexible, and usually time-limited.
From Passenger Jets To Chemical Spills
Many scientists form vos to pursue their research. Vos exist for astronomy
research, alternative energy research, biology research and more.
The needs of each vo are different. For example, a vo formed to develop a next-
generation passenger jet will need to run complex computer simulations, testing various
combinations of components from different manufacturers, while keeping the
proprietary know-how associated with each component hidden from the other
consortium members.Another example is an environmental science vo, tasked with managing a
chemical spill. This vo will need to analyze local weather and soil models to estimate the
spread of the spill and determine its impact. They will need to create a short term
mitigation plan and help emergency response personnel to plan and coordinate the
evacuation.
The Hardware
Grids must be built "on top of" hardware, which forms the physical infrastructure
of a grid - things like computers and networks. This infrastructure is often called the grid
"fabric".
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Networks are an essential piece of the grid "fabric". Networks link the different
computers that form part of a grid, allowing them to be handled as one huge computer.
Networks are characterized by their size (local, national and international) and
throughput (the amount of data transferred in a specific time). Throughput is measured
in kbps (kilo bits per second; where kilo means a thousand), mbps (m for mega; a
million) or gbps (g for giga; a billion).
One of the big ideas of grid computing is to take advantage of ultra-fast
networks. This idea allows us to access globally distributed resources in an integrated
and data-intensive way. Ultra-fast networks also help to minimize latency: the delays
that build up as data are transmitted over the internet.
Grids are built "on top of" high-performance networks, such as the intra-
european geant network, which has 10gbps performance on the network "backbone".
This backbone links the major "nodes" on the grid (like national computing centres).
One level down from the "backbone" are the network links, which join individual
institutions to nodes on the backbone. Performance of these is typically 1gbps.
A further level down are the 10 to 100mbps desktop-to-institution network links.
Design Considerations And Variations
One feature of distributed grids is that they can be formed from computing
resources belonging to multiple individuals or organizations (known as multiple
administrative domains). This can facilitate commercial transactions, as in utility
computing, or make it easier to assemble volunteer computing networks.
One disadvantage of this feature is that the computers which are actually
performing the calculations might not be entirely trustworthy. The designers of the
system must thus introduce measures to prevent malfunctions or malicious participants
from producing false, misleading, or erroneous results, and from using the system as anattack vector. This often involves assigning work randomly to different nodes
(presumably with different owners) and checking that at least two different nodes report
the same answer for a given work unit. Discrepancies would identify malfunctioning
and malicious nodes.
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Due to the lack of central control over the hardware, there is no way to guarantee
that nodes will not drop out of the network at random times. Some nodes (like laptops
or dialup internet customers) may also be available for computation but not network
communications for unpredictable periods. These variations can be accommodated by
assigning large work units (thus reducing the need for continuous network connectivity)
and reassigning work units when a given node fails to report its results as expected.
The impacts of trust and availability on performance and development difficulty
can influence the choice of whether to deploy onto a dedicated computer cluster, to idle
machines internal to the developing organization, or to an open external network of
volunteers or contractors.
In many cases, the participating nodes must trust the central system not to abuse
the access that is being granted, by interfering with the operation of other programs,
mangling stored information, transmitting private data, or creating new security holes.
Other systems employ measures to reduce the amount of trust "client" nodes must place
in the central system. For example, parabon computation produces grid computing
software that operates in a java sandbox.
Public systems or those crossing administrative domains (including different
departments in the same organization) often result in the need to run on heterogeneous
systems, using different operating systems and hardware architectures. With many
languages, there is a tradeoff between investment in software development and the
number of platforms that can be supported (and thus the size of the resulting network).
Cross-platform languages can reduce the need to make this tradeoff, though potentially
at the expense of high performance on any given node (due to run-time interpretation or
lack of optimization for the particular platform).
Various middleware projects have created generic infrastructure, to allow
various scientific and commercial projects to harness a particular associated grid, or for
the purpose of setting up new grids. Boinc is a common one for academic projects
seeking public volunteers; more are listed at the end of the article.
Cpu Scavenging
CPU-scavenging, cycle-scavenging, cycle stealing, or shared computing creates a
"grid" from the unused resources in a network of participants (whether worldwide or
internal to an organization). Usually this technique is used to make use of instruction
cycles on desktop computers that would otherwise be wasted at night, during lunch, or
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even in the scattered seconds throughout the day when the computer is waiting for user
input or slow devices.
Volunteer computing projects use the CPU scavenging model almost exclusively.
In practice, participating computers also donate some supporting amount of diskstorage space, ram, and network bandwidth, in addition to raw CPU power. Nodes in
this model are also more vulnerable to going "offline" in one way or another from time to
time, as their owners use their resources for their primary purpose.
History
The term grid computing originated in the early 1990s as a metaphor for making
computer power as easy to access as an electric power grid in Ian foster and CarlKesselmans seminal work, "the grid: blueprint for a new computing infrastructure".
CPU scavenging and volunteer computing were popularized beginning in 1997
by distributed.net and later in 1999 by seti@home to harness the power of networked
PCs worldwide, in order to solve CPU-intensive research problems.
The ideas of the grid (including those from distributed computing, object
oriented programming, cluster computing, web services and others) were brought
together by Ian foster, Carl Kesselman and Steve Tuecke, widely regarded as the "fathers
of the grid." they led the effort to create the globus toolkit incorporating not just CPU
management (examples: cluster management and cycle scavenging) but also storagemanagement, security provisioning, data movement, monitoring and a toolkit for
developing additional services based on the same infrastructure including agreement
negotiation, notification mechanisms, trigger services and information aggregation.
While the globus toolkit remains the de facto standard for building grid solutions, a
number of other tools have been built that answer some subset of services needed to
create an enterprise grid.
Father Of The Grid
An exact extraction of an article by Amy m. Braverman, in Chicago university e-
magazine, ( on April 2004 volume 96, number 4).
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computer scientist Ian foster has developed the software to tak e shared
computing to a global level.
In a bare research institutes building room with white, cinder-block walls, Ian
foster sits at a red table holding his laptop, blinds shut to block the windows glare, eyes
glazed behind wire-rimmed glasses. i might not be too articulate today, the Arthur
holly Compton distinguished service professor of computer science warns. Im on two
hours sleep. The previous night a west coast students paper was due at midnight,
Pacific Time, and then, awake anyway, he worked online with some European
colleagues. And because the father of grid computing is alsowith wife Angela
Smyth, md00, a hospitals psychiatry fellowthe father of a five- and a six-year-old, he
rarely gets to sleep in.
So when asked to predict how grid computing will change everyday life in five,
ten, 15 years, he thinks for a moment but comes up short. Im not feeling very creative
right now, he says in the quick cadence of a native New Zealander. But foster, 45, who
heads the distributed systems lab at Argonne national laboratory, clearly has had more
inspired moments, persuading the federal government to invest in several multimillion-
dollar grid-technology projects and convincing companies such as IBM, Hewlett-
Packard, oracle, and Sun Microsystems that grids are the answer to complex
computational problemsthe next major evolution of the internet.
Just as the internet is a tool for mass communication, grids are a tool for
amplifying computer power and storage space. By linking far-flung supercomputers,
servers, storage systems, and databases across existing internet lines, grids allow more
numbers to be crunched faster than ever before. Several grid projects exist today, but
eventually, foster says, a huge global gridthe grid, akin to the internetwill
perform complex tasks such as designing semiconductors or screening thousands of
potential pharmaceutical drugs in an hour rather than a year.
Though corporations recently have begun to show interest in grids, research
institutions have long been a ripe testing ground, in the same way that the internet
sprouted in academia before blossoming in the commercial world. Large projects are
already using the technology. The Sloan digital sky surveyan effort at Chicago,
fermilab, and 11 other institutions to map a quarter of the night sky, determining morethan 100 million celestial objects positions and absolute brightnessharnesses computer
power from labs nationwide to perform in minutes scans that previously took a week.
The national digital mammography archive (ndma) in the united states and ediamond in
the united kingdom are creating digital-image libraries to hold their respective countries
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scans. With an expected 35 million u.s. mammograms a year, at 160 megabytes per
exam, the ndma web site explains, the annual volume could exceed 5.6 petabytes [a
petabyte is 1 million gigabytes] a year, and the minimal daily traffic a day is expected to
be 28 terabytes [a terabyte is 1,024 gigabytes]traffic that wouldnt be possible without
a grid. By combining computer power and storage space from multiple locations,
doctors can view a patients progress over time, compare her with other patient
populations, or access diagnostic tools. A similar venture, the biomedical informatics
research network, compiles brain images from different databases so researchers can
compare the brains of alzheimers patients, for example, to those of healthy people.
Still another project is a grid for the network for earthquake engineering
simulation (nees). An $82 million program funded by the national science foundation,
nees seeks to advance earthquake-engineering research and reduce the physical havoc
earthquakes create. The grid, to be completed in october, links civil engineers around the
country with 15 sites containing equipment such as 4-meter-by-4-meter shake tables ortsunami simulators. Through the grid, engineers building san franciscos new bay bridge
tested their design structures remotely to make sure they met the latest earthquake-
resistance standards. At argonne, a neesgrid partner, an 18-square-inch mini shake table,
used for software development and demonstration, sits in material scientist nestor
zaluzecs office. A researcher in, say, san diego can activate the mini shake table, moving
it quickly back and forth to agitate the 2-foot-tall plastic model sitting on it. Likewise,
from his desktop zaluzec can maneuver video cameras in places like boulder, colorado,
or champaign, illinois, to watch or participate in experiments.
At argonne even some meetings about grids are held using grids. With the accessgrid, developed by argonnes futures lab for remote group collaboration, scientists
nationwide convene in a virtual conference room, from large groups such as a 2002
national science foundation meeting, where 28 sites popped in, star treklike, on a white
argonne wall, to smaller thursday test cruises held to keep the system bug-free. At these
sessions access grid programmers susanne lefvert and eric olson sit at personal
computers, talking with wall-projected images of scientists from other energy
department labs, including the princeton plasma physics lab and lawrence berkeley
national lab.
By now the access grid, first used in 1999, has more than 250 research nodesrooms equipped to connecton five continents. A major automobile company and some
oil and gas companies have developed their own access grids, notes futures lab research
manager and computer-science doctoral student mike papka, sm02, and chicago
researchers also are experimenting with the technology. Last fall jonathan silverstein,
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assistant professor of surgery and senior fellow in the joint argonne/ chicago
computation institute, along with chicago anesthesiologist stephen small and
argonne/chicago computer scientist rick stevens, won a national institutes of health
contract to install access grid nodes at the u of c hospitals. Connecting operating rooms,
the emergency room, radiology, ambulances, and residents hand-held tablet pcs, the
three-year prototype project could change the way hospitals process information.
Students will watch not only real-time operating-room video feeds but also feeds from
laparoscopic devices and robotic surgeons. Radiologists will beam three-dimensional x-
ray scans to surgeonsminus middlemen and waiting time. we are in all these complex
environments, silverstein says. The grid allows medical workers literally to share
environments, eliminate hand-offs, avoid phone taginstead of passing messages
between multiple physicians or waiting before taking the next step, we could all meet
for one moment and relay necessary information.
Then theres the teragrid. Launched in 2001 by the national science foundationwith $53 million, the teragrid aims to be the worlds largest, most comprehensive,
distributed infrastructure for open scientific research, its web site declares. Beginning
with five sitesargonne; the university of illinois urbana-champaign; the university of
california, san diego; the california institute of technology; and the pittsburgh
supercomputing centerthe project has since picked up four more partners. To be
finished by late september, teragrid executive director charlie catlett says, it will have 20
teraflops (a teraflop equals a trillion operations per second) of computing power and a
petabyte of storage space. Many of its sites, the web page says, already boast a cross-
country network backbone four times faster than the fastest research networks currently
in existence.
The teragrid aims to revolutionize the speed at which science operates. The
multi-institutional mimd lattice computation collaboration, for instance, which tests
quantum chromodynamic theory and helps interpret high-energy accelerator
experiments, uses more than 2 million processor hours of computer time per yearand
needs more. Another project, namd, a parallel molecular dynamics code designed to
simulate large biomolecular systems, has maxed out the fastest system available. On the
teragrid, already used by some projects, such research can move forward.
Sharing resourcesa practice known as distributed computinggoes back tocomputers early days. In the late 1950s and early 1960s researchers realized that the
machines, then costing tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, needed to be more
efficient. Because they spent much time idly waiting for human input, the researchers
reasoned, multiple users could share them by doling out that unemployed power. Today
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computers are cheaper, but theyre still underutilizedfive percent usage is normal,
foster sayswhich is one reason many companies connect their computers to form
unified networks. In a sense grids are simply another variety of distributed computing,
now used in many forms. Cluster computing, for example, links multiple pcs to replace
unwieldy mainframes or supercomputers. In peer-to-peer computing, such as napster,
users who have downloaded specific software can connect to each other and share files.
And theres internet computing, most notably seti@home, a virtual supercomputer based
at the university of california, berkeley, that analyzes data from puerto ricos arecibo
radio telescope to find signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. Pc users download
seti@homes screen-saver program, and when their computers are otherwise idle they
retrieve data from the internet and send the results to a central processing system.
But a lot had to happen between the grids earliest inklings and its current test
beds. Foster, who switched from studying math and chemistry to computer science at
new zealands university of canterbury before earning a doctorate in the field at londonsimperial college, came to argonne in 1989. Programming specialized languages for
computing chemistry codes, he used parallel networks, similar to clusters. high-speed
networks were starting to appear, he writes in the april 2003 scientific american, and it
became clear that if we could integrate digital resources and activities across networks, it
could transform the process of scientific work. Indeed research was occurring more and
more on an international scale, with scientists from different institutions trying to share
data that was growing exponentially. In 1994 foster refocused his research to distributed
computing. With steven tuecke, today the lead software architect in argonnes
distributed systems laboratory, and carl kesselman, now director of the center for grid
technologies at the university of southern californias information sciences institute, he
began the globus project, a software system for international scientific collaboration. In
the same way that internet protocols became standard for the web, creating a common
language and tools, they envisioned globus software that would link sites into a virtual
organization, with standardized methods to authenticate identities, authorize specific
activities, and control data movement.
The concept was quickly put to use. At a 1995 supercomputing conference rick
stevens, who also directs argonnes math and computer-science division, and thomas a.
Defanti, director of the university of illinoischicagos electronic visualization lab,
headed a prototype project, called i-way (information wide area year), that linked 17
high-speed research networks for two weeks. Fosters team developed the software that,
he writes in scientific american, knitted the sites into a single virtual system, so users
could log on once, locate suitable computers, reserve time, load application codes, and
then monitor their execution. Scientists performed computationally complicated
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simulations such as colliding neutron stars and moving cloud patterns around the
planet. it was the woodstock of the grid, larry smarr, the conferences program chair
and now director of the california institute for telecommunications and information
technology, told the new york times last july, everyone not sleeping for three days,
running around and engaged in a kind of scientific performance art.
The experience inspired much enthusiasmand funding. The u.s. defense
advanced research projects agency gave the globus project $800,000 a year for three
years. In 1997 fosters team unveiled the first version of the globus toolkit, the software
that does the knitting. The national science foundation, nasa, and the energy department
began grid projects, with globus underlying them all. And while foster and his crew
have used an open-source approach to develop the technology, making the software
freely available and its code open for outside programmers to read and modify, in 1998
he and his colleagues also began the global grid forum, a group that meets three times a
year to adopt basic language and infrastructure standards. Such standards, foster writesin what is the grid? (july 2002), allow users to collaborate with any interested party
and thus to create something more than a plethora of balkanized, incompatible, non-
interoperable distributed systems.
The globus toolkit, named the most promising new technology by r&d
magazine in 2002, a top-ten emerging technology by technology review in 2003, and
given a chicago innovation award last year by the sun-times, still needs work to perfect
security and other measures. But the open-source model, much like that used to develop
the internet, has proved useful in ferreting out bugs and making improvements. When
physicists overloaded one grid system by submitting tens of thousands of tasks at once,for example, the university of wisconsin helped design applications to manage a grids
many users. As the technology moves from research institutions, whose data is stored
mostly in electronic files, to corporations, which favor databases, the uks e-science
program is developing ways to handle the different systems.
Without the open-source approach, foster says, the software might not have
become the de facto standard for most grid projects, and ibm, the globus toolkits sole
corporate funder for the past three years, wouldnt have taken such an active role.
success of the grid depends on everyone adopting it, he says, so its
counterproductive to work in private. Brokerage firm charles schwab uses a griddeveloped by ibm to give its clients real-time investment advice. The computer company
also has projects under way with morgan stanley and hewitt associates. For fosterthe
british computer societys 2002 lovelace medal winner and a 2003 american association
for the advancement of science fellowsuch corporate ventures are a critical step in
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making grids, already a powerful scientific tool, important in everyday life, when the
grid will be as common as the internetand as seamless. In the 1960s mits fernando
corbato, whom foster calls the father of time-sharing operating systems, described
shared computing as a utility, meaning computer access would operate like water, gas,
and electricity, where a client would connect and pay by usage amount. Today the grid
is envisioned similarly, and utility computing is used synonymously.
But when grids will become so ubiquitous remains a big question. Even on a full
nights sleep fostertodays father figurehesitates to guess beyond thats some way
out, happily encouraging his virtual child but not wanting to impose unrealistic
expectations. its a process, he says. Although large grids are running in both the
united states and europe, and foster skipped the march global grid forum meeting in
berlin to talk up grids in his homeland new zealand, we havent nailed down all the
standards. Theres more to be done. Its a global, multi-industry path hes forging, and
if he cant predict where the next generation will head, hes prepared the grid to lead theway.
Current Projects And Applications
Grids offer a way to solve grand challenge problems like protein folding,
financial modeling, earthquake simulation, and climate/weather modeling. Grids offer a
way of using the information technology resources optimally inside an organization.
They also provide a means for offering information technology as a utility forcommercial and non-commercial clients, with those clients paying only for what they
use, as with electricity or water.
Grid computing is presently being applied successfully by the national science
foundation's national technology grid, nasa's information power grid, pratt & whitney,
bristol-myers squibb, co., and american express.
One of the most famous cycle-scavenging networks is seti@home, which was
using more than 3 million computers to achieve 23.37 sustained teraflops (979 lifetime
teraflops) as of september 2001.
As of may 2005, folding@home had achieved peaks of 186 teraflops on over
160,000 machines.
As of august 2009 folding@home achieves more than 4 petaflops on over 350,000
machines.
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The european union has been a major proponent of grid computing. Many
projects have been funded through the framework programme of the european
commission. Many of the projects are highlighted below, but two deserve special
mention: beingrid and enabling grids for e-science.
Beingrid (business experiments in grid) is a research project partly funded by the
european commission[citation needed] as an integrated project under the sixth
framework programme (fp6) sponsorship program. Started in june 1, 2006, the project
will run 42 months, until november 2009. The project is coordinated by atos origin.
According to the project fact sheet, their mission is to establish effective routes to foster
the adoption of grid computing across the eu and to stimulate research into innovative
business models using grid technologies. To extract best practice and common themes
from the experimental implementations, two groups of consultants are analyzing a series
of pilots, one technical, one business. The results of these cross analyzes are provided by
the website it-tude.com. The project is significant not only for its long duration, but alsofor its budget, which at 24.8 million euros, is the largest of any fp6 integrated project. Of
this, 15.7 million is provided by the european commission and the remainder by its 98
contributing partner companies.
Another well-known project is distributed.net, which was started in 1997 and has
run a number of successful projects in its history.
The nasa advanced supercomputing facility (nas) has run genetic algorithms
using the condor cycle scavenger running on about 350 sun and sgi workstations.
Until april 27, 2007, united devices operates the united devices cancer research
project based on its grid mp product, which cycle scavenges on volunteer pcs connected
to the internet. As of june 2005, the grid mp ran on about 3,100,000 machines .
The enabling grids for e-science project, which is based in the european union
and includes sites in asia and the united states, is a follow up project to the european
datagrid (edg) and is arguably the largest computing grid on the planet. This, along with
the lhc computing grid (lcg) have been developed to support the experiments using the
cern large hadron collider. The lcg project is driven by cern's need to handle huge
amounts of data, where storage rates of several gigabytes per second (10 petabytes per
year) are required. A list of active sites participating within lcg can be found online as
can real time monitoring of the egee infrastructure . The relevant software and
documentation is also publicly accessible .
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Fastest Virtual Supercomputers
Boinc - 525 teraflops ( as of 4 jun 2007 )
Definitions
Today there are many definitions of grid computing:
The definitive definition of a grid is provided by ian foster in hisarticle "what is the grid? A three point checklist" the three points of
this checklist are:
Computing resources are not administered centrally. Open standards are used. Non-trivial quality of service is achieved.
Plaszczak/wellner define grid technology as "the technology thatenables resource virtualization, on-demand provisioning, and service
(resource) sharing between organizations."
Ibm defines grid computing as "the ability, using a set of openstandards and protocols, to gain access to applications and data,processing power, storage capacity and a vast array of other
computing resources over the internet. A grid is a type of parallel and
distributed system that enables the sharing, selection, and
aggregation of resources distributed across 'multiple' administrative
domains based on their (resources) availability, capacity,
performance, cost and users' quality-of-service requirements"
An earlier example of the notion of computing as utility was in 1965by mit's fernando corbat. Fernando and the other designers of the
multics operating system envisioned a computer facility operating
"like a power company or water company".
Buyya (Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is a Senior Lecturer and the Storage Tekfellow of Grid Computing in the Department of Computer Science
and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia)
defines a grid as "a type of parallel and distributed system that
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enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically
distributed autonomous resources dynamically at runtime depending
on their availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-
of-service requirements".
Cern, one of the largest users of grid technology, talk of the grid: "aservice for sharing computer power and data storage capacity over
the internet."
Pragmatically, grid computing is attractive to geographically-distributed non-profit collaborative research efforts like the ncsa
bioinformatics grids such as birn: external grids.
Grid computing is also attractive to large commercial enterprises withcomplex computation problems who aim to fully exploit their internal
computing power: internal grids.
ServePath.com defines grid computing as, The definition of GridComputing is the simultaneous application of multiple computers to
a problem that typically requires access to significant amounts of data
or a large number of computer processing cycles. Grid computing is
quickly gaining popularity due to its ability to maximize the
efficiency of computing sources as well as its ability to solve large
problems with considerably less computing power.
Grids can be categorized with a three stage model of departmental grids,
enterprise grids and global grids. These correspond to a firm initially utilising resources
within a single group i.e. An engineering department connecting desktop machines,
clusters and equipment. This progresses to enterprise grids where nontechnical staff's
computing resources can be used for cycle-stealing and storage. A global grid is a
connection of enterprise and departmental grids that can be used in a commercial or
collaborative manner.
But What Does "High Performance" Mean?
Performance is measured in flops. A flop is a basic computational operation - like
adding two numbers together. A gigaflop is a billion flops, or a billion operations.
The Death Of Distance
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Computing grids use international networks to link computing resources from all
over the world. This means you can sit in france and use computers in the u.s, or work
from australia using computers from taiwan.
Such international grids are possible today because of the impressive
development of networking technology. Ten years ago, it would have been stupid to
send large amounts of data across the globe for processing on other computer resources,
because of the time taken to transfer the data. Today, all this is possible and more!
Pushed by the internet economy and the widespread penetration of optical fibers
in telecommunications systems, the performance of wide area networks has been
doubling every nine months or so over the last few years. That translates to a 3000x
improvement in 15 years. Imagine if cars had made the same improvements in speed
since 1985you could easily go into orbit by pressing down hard on the accelerator!
Faster! Faster!
Some researchers have computing needs that make even the fastest connections
seem slow: some scientists need even higher-speed connectivity, up to tens of gigabits
per second (gbps); others need ultra-low "latency", which means there is minimal delay
when sending date to remote colleagues in "real time".
Other researchers want "just-in-time" delivery of data across a grid, so that
complicated calculations requiring constant communication between processors can be
performed. To avoid communication bottlenecks, grid developers also have to determine
ways to compensate for failures, like transmission errors or pc crashes.
To meet such critical requirements, several high-performance networking issues
have to be solved, including the optimization of transport protocols and the
development of technical solutions such as high-performance ethernet switching.
Secure Access
Secure access to shared resources is one of the most challenging areas of grid
development.
To ensure secure access, grid developers and users need to manage three
important things:
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Access policy - what is shared? Who is allowed to share? When cansharing occur?
Authentication - how do you identify a user or resource? Authorization - how do you determine whether a certain operation is
consistent with the rules?
Grids need to efficiently track of all this information, which may change from
day to day. This means that grids need to be extremely flexible, and have a reliable
accounting mechanism. Ultimately, such accounting will be used to decide pricing
policies for using a grid.
These accounting challenges are not new - the same questions arise whenever
you use your credit card in a caf. But grid users must share resources, and so grids
require new solutions. Imagine if the owner of a caf were to lend some tables to anothercaf...how would you securely track customers, orders and payments?
Security And Trust
The issue of security is linked to trust: you may trust the other users, but do you
trust that your data and applications are securely protected on their shared machines?
Without adequate security, someone could read or modify your data - hence the
warnings about security when you use your credit card on the internet.
The issue of security concerns all information technologies and is taken very
seriously. New security solutions are constantly being developed, including
sophisticated data encryption techniques. But it is a never-ending race to stay ahead of
malicious hackers.
Resource Use
Grids allow you to efficiently and automatically spread your work across manycomputer resources. The result? Your jobs are finished much faster.
Imagine if you had to do 1000 difficult maths questions. You could do them
yourself, or you could use a computing grid. If you used a grid of 100 computers, you
would give one question or "job" to each computer. When a computer finished one "job",
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The open grid forum is a standards body for the grid community. With more
than 5000 volunteer members, this body is a significant force for setting standards and
community developments.
The Middleware
"middleware" is the software that organizes and integrates the resources in a
grid.
Middleware is made up of many software programs, containing hundreds of
thousands of lines of computer code. Together, this code automates all the "machine to
machine" (m2m) interactions that create a single, seamless computational grid.
Agents, Brokers And Striking Deals
Middleware automatically negotiate deals in which resources are exchanged,
passing from a grid resource provider to a grid user. In these deals, some middleware
programs act as "agents" and others as "brokers".
Agent programs present "metadata" (data about data) that describes users, data
and resources. Broker programs undertake the m2m negotiations required for user
authentication and authorization, and then strike the "deals" for access to, and payment
for, specific data and resources.
Once a deal is set, the broker schedules the necessary computational activities
and oversees the data transfers. At the same time, special "housekeeping" agents
optimize network routings and monitor quality of service.
And all this occurs automatically, in a fraction of the time that it would take
humans at their computers to do manually.
Delving Inside Middleware
There are many other layers within the middleware layer. For example,
middleware includes a layer of "resource and connectivity protocols", and a higher layer
of "collective services".
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Resource and connectivity protocols handle all grid-specific network transactions
between different computers and grid resources. For example, computers contributing to
a particular grid must recognize grid-relevant messages and ignore the rest. This is done
with communication protocols, which allow the resources to communicate with each
other, enabling exchange of data, and authentication protocols, which provide secure
mechanisms for verifying the identity of both users and resources.
The collective services are also based on protocols: information protocols, which
obtain information about the structure and state of the resources on a grid, and
management protocols, which negotiate uniform access to the resources. Collective
services include:
Updating directories of available resources
Brokering resources (which like stock broking, is about negotiatingbetween those who want to "buy" resources and those who want to "sell")
Monitoring and diagnosing problems Replicating data so that multiple copies are available at different locations
for ease of use
Providing membership/policy services for tracking who is allowed to dowhat and when.
Globus Toolkit
The globus toolkit is a popular example of grid middleware. It's a set of tools for
constructing a grid, covering security measures, resource location, resource
management, communications and so on.
Many major grid projects use the globus toolkit, which is being developed by the
globus alliance, a team primarily involving ian foster's team at argonne national
laboratory and carl kesselman's team at the university of southern california in los
angeles.
Many of the protocols and functions defined by the globus toolkit are similar tothose in networking and storage today, but have been optimized for grid-specific
deployments.
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National Grids
National grids like those listed below combine national computing resouces to
create powerful grid computing resources.
D-grid dutchgrid
Eneagrid fermilab computing division
Grid-ireland hungrid
National grid service nersc
Norgrid swegrid
Teragrid thai national grid twgrid
Project details d-grid (germany)
Synopsis the first d-grid projects started in september 2005 with the goal
of developing a distributed, integrated resource platform for
high-performance computing and related services to enable
the processing of large amounts of scientific data and
information.
Project details dutchgrid (the netherlands)
Synopsis dutchgrid is the platform for grid computing and technology
in the netherlands. Open to all institutions for research andtest-bed activities, dutchgrid aims to coordinate various grid
deployment efforts and to offer a forum for the exchange of
experiences on grid technologies.
Project details eneagrid (italy)
Synopsis eneagrid makes use of grid technologies to provide an
integrated production environment including all the high
performance and high throughput computational resources
available in enea, the italian national agency for new
technologies, energy and the environment. Interoperability
with other grid infrastructures is currently in operation.
Project details fermilab computing division (fermilab in the u.s.)
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Synopsis fermigrid united fermilabs computing resources into a single
grid infrastructure, changing the way that computing was
done at the lab by improving efficiency and making better use
of resources. Now involved in developing and supporting
innovative computing solutions and services for fermilab.
Project details grid-ireland (ireland)
Synopsis grid-ireland fosters and promotes grid activities in ireland,
involving partners across the country.
Project details hungrid (uk)
Synopsis hungrid is the first official hungarian virtual organization of
egee. Its goal is to allow grid users of hungarian academic and
educational institutes to perform the computing activitiesrelevant for their researches and thus the vo functions as a
catch-all vo for all the hungarian participants that do not (yet)
have an established vo in their respective field of research. It is
also an egee testing environment for hungarian research
communities that show interest in starting their own virtual
organizations.
Project details national grid service (uk)
Synopsis the ngs aims to provide coherent electronic access for uk
researchers to all computational and data based resources and
facilities. Join their mailing list for up-to-the-minute ngs
action..
Project details nersc (national energy research scientific computing center in
the u.s.)
Synopsis users can access several nersc resources via globus grid
interfaces using x509 grid certificates. Nersc is part of the open
science grid (osg), and is available to select osg virtual
organizations for compute and storage resources.
Project details norgrid (norway)
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Ap grid d4science
Deisa eela-2
Egee egi_ds
Euasiagrid eu-indiagrid
Gridpp lcg
Nextgrid nordugrid
Open grid forum ogf-europe
Open science grid pragma
Winds
Project details ap grid asia-pacific grid
Synopsis ap grid is a partnership for grid computing in the asia-pacificregion, aiming to share technologies, resources and knowledge
in order to build, nurture and promote grid technologies and
applications. Partners come from 15 countries in the asia-
pacific and beyond..
Project details d4science distributed collaboratories infrastructure on grid
enabled technology 4 science
Synopsis d4science aims to create grid-based and data-centric e-
infrastructures to support scientific research. It is co-funded by
the european commission until 2010 and involves partners
across europe.
Project details deisa distributed european infrastructure for
supercomputing applications
Synopsis deisa combines the power of supercomputing centres across
europe to accelerate scientific research.
Project details eela e-science for europe and latin america
Synopsis eela aims to provide grid facilities to promote scientific
collaboration between europe and latin america, aiming toensure the long-term sustainability of the e-infrastructure.
Project details egee enabling grids for e-science
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Synopsis egee is the largest multi-disciplinary grid infrastructure in the
world, bringing together more than 120 organisations to
provide scientific computing resources to the european and
global research community. Egee comprises 250 sites in 48
countries and more than 68,000 CPUs available to some 8,000
users, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Project details egi_ds european grid initiative design study
Synopsis the european grid initiative design study aims to establish a
sustainable grid infrastructure in europe. Driven by the needs
and requirements of the research community, it is expected to
enable the next leap in research infrastructures, thereby
supporting collaborative scientific discoveries in the european
research area. Egi_ds includes partners across europe
Project details euasiagrid collaboration between europe and asia
Synopsis euasiagrid aims to pave the way towards an asian e-science
grid infrastructure, in synergy with the other european grid
initiatives in europe and asia.
Project details eu-indiagrid collaboration between europe and india
Synopsis eu-indiagrid will bring together over 500 multidisciplinary
organisations to build a grid-enabled e-science community
aiming to boost r&d innovation across europe and india.
Project details gant pan-european gigabit research network
Synopsis gant provides networking infrastructure to support
researchers, as well as an infrastructure for network research.
Gant aims for high speed connectivity, geographical
expansion, global connectivity and guaranteed quality of
service. It comprises 27 european national research and
education networks.
Project details gridpp grid for uk particle physics
Synopsis gridpp is a collaboration of particle physicists and computing
scientists from the uk and cern, who are building a grid for
particle physics. The main objective is to develop and deploy a
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large-scale science grid in the uk for use by the worldwide
particle physics community.
Project details lcg worldwide lhc computing grid
Synopsis the mission of the lhc computing project (lcg) is to build and
maintain a data storage and analysis infrastructure for the
entire high energy physics community that will use the large
hadron collider.
Project details nextgrid supporting mainstream use of grids
Synopsis nextgrid aims to enable the widespread use of grids by
research, industry and the ordinary citizen, thus creating a
dynamic marketplace for new services and products. An eu-
funded project with multiple partners
Project details nordugrid grids in the nordic region
Synopsis nordugrid is a grid research and development collaboration
aiming at development, maintenance and support of a free
grid middleware known as the "advanced resource connector"
(arc). The collaboration was established by five nordic
academic institutes and is based upon a memorandum of
understanding.
Project details open grid forum international grid standards
Synopsis the open grid forum is a community-initiated forum of 5000+
people interested in distributed computing and grid
technologies. Ogf aims to promote and support grid
technologies via the creation and documentation of "best
practices" - technical specifications, user experiences, and
implementation guidelines. Involves more than 400
organizations from 50 countries.
Project details ogf-europe european and international grid standardsSynopsis ogf-europe works closely with open grid forum and plays a
key role in influencing the drive towards global
standardisation efforts and in bringing best practices in the
european computing environment.
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Project details open science grid open grid infrastructure for collaborative
science
Synopsis the open science grid consortium provides an open grid
infrastructure for science in the u.s and beyond. Osg combines
resources at many u.s. labs and universities and provides
access to shared resources for the benefit of scientific
applications.
Project details pragma pacific rim applications and grid middleware
assembly
Synopsis pragma is an open organization in which pacific rim
institutions collaborate to develop grid-enabled applications
and to deploy the infrastructure throughout the pacific region.Pragma aims to enhance current collaborations and
connections, build new collaborations, and formalize resource-
sharing agreements.
Project details winds grid collaboration in europe, latin america and the
caribbean
Synopsis the www.winds-lac.eu platform, maintained by the winds-la
and winds-caribe projects, aims to further develop and
support ict research and development collaboration between
europe, latin america and the caribbean by identifying
common needs, research issues and opportunities for
cooperation, promoting excellence research from the regions in
europe, and proposing a long-term cooperation strategy in the
field of ict research.
High-Throughput Problems
High-throughput applications are problems that can be divided into many
independent tasks. Computing grids can be used to schedule these tasks, dealing them
out to the different computer processors in the grid. As soon as a processor finishes one
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task, the next task arrives. In this way, hundreds of tasks can be performed in a very
short time.
Examples of high-throughput
: Error! Bookmark not defined. applications include:?
The analysis of thousands of particle collisions in a bid to understandmore about our universe, as in the large hadron collider computing grid
The analysis of thousands of molecules in a bid to discover a drugcandidate against a specific malaria protein, as part of the grid-enabled
wisdom project
The analysis of thousands of protein folding configurations in a bid todiscover more efficient ways of packaging drug proteins, using rosetta
software in the open science grid
The use of volunteer computing to power applications includingseti@home, which aids in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence;
fightaids@home, which models the evolution of drug resistance and helps
to design new anti-hiv drugs, or brats@home, which works on
gravitational ray tracing. These "@home" tasks involved are totally
independent, so it doesn't matter whether some tasks take a long time.
After a "time-out" period, unfinished tasks are simply sent elsewhere to be
processed.
High-Performance Problems
When people talk about "high performance computing" or hpc, they're generally
talking about supercomputing. Supercomputers are different to computing grids: where
grids link computers that are distributed around an institution, country or the world,
supercomputers are one giant computer in a single room.
Supercomputers generally deal with computer-centric problems; the secret to
solving these problems is "teraflops": as many as possible.
Grid computing allows large computational resources to be combined, helping
scientists to tackle problems that cannot be solved on a single system, or to solve
problems much more quickly.
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Works Cited
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Braverman, A. M. (2004, April). Father of Grid Computing. Retrieved from
University of Chicago Magazine: http://uchicago.edu
Buyya, R., & Venugopal, S. (2005, July). A Gentle Introduction to Grid
Computing and Technologies.
Educause Learning Initiative. (2006, January). 7 things you should know about...
Grid computing. Retrieved from educause.edu: www.educause.edu/eli
Jacob, B., Brown, M., Fukui, K., & Trivedi, N. (2005, December). Introduction to
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RedBooks: ibm.com/redbooks