Bio-IT World carries a very interesting article about grid computing. Here is how it starts.
Two major grid initiatives -- the TeraGrid and the Dynamic Data-Driven Application Systems (DDDAS) program -- will expand the role of grids from aggregators of computer processing power to infrastructures that provide access to large distributed databases and in some cases allow researchers to interact with simulations in real time.
Grids have typically been used to deliver high-performance computer processing power for scientific calculations. But both the TeraGrid, which is expected to be online this summer, and the National Science Foundation’s DDDAS program, which is in its early stages, plan to move beyond this simple computing paradigm.
"Grids are moving beyond aggregation of computing resources," says Daniel Reed, principal investigator of the TeraGrid project. "With the TeraGrid, we’re not talking about a distributed computer, but rather a distributed system that uses grid technologies," says Reed. "[The TeraGrid] will enable and empower new science by providing remote access to distributed data archives and computers."
Please note that we are speaking of a massive grid effort here.
The TeraGrid will have more than 20 teraflops (20 trillion floating point operations per second) of processing power and about 1 petabyte (1 quadrillion bytes) of storage capacity distributed over five sites.
Each site will have new Linux clusters built on Intel Itanium 64-bit systems. Each of the major sites will connect into one of two backbone hubs over 30 Gb/s links. The two backbone hubs (one in Chicago, the other in Los Angeles) will be connected over a backbone network with about 40 Gb/s capacity. The main technology partners in the TeraGrid project are Intel, IBM, Oracle, Qwest, Myricom, and Sun Microsystems. Once the project is completed, expenditures on equipment and staff will total about $100 million.
I've not enough room here to cover the DDDAS project which is in its early stages, but envisions dynamic computer simulations. Please read the Bio-IT World article for more details.
Source: Salvatore Salamone, Bio-IT World, January 15, 2003
11:03:36 AM Permalink
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