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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Applications:
WORLD'S LARGEST GRID-BASED
SUPERCOMPUTER GIVEN GO-AHEAD
The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council has announced 16
million
pounds to create a massive computing Grid, equivalent to the world's second
largest supercomputer after Japan's Earth Simulator computer. This Grid, known
as GridPP2 will eventually form part of a larger European Grid, to be used to
process the data deluge from CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory,
when its new facility, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), comes online in
2007.
GridPP is a collaboration of U.K. Particle Physicists and Computer
Scientists
working together to create a Grid for particle physics, enabling them to
process the vast volumes of data generated in experiments. The LHC, a particle
accelerator which will probe the nature of matter, is expected to generate
data at a rate equivalent to 20 million CDs a year.
Professor Ian Halliday, chief executive of PPARC, said "GridPP2 will place
U.K. particle physicists in a prime position to exploit physics from the Large
Hadron Collider."
"The GridPP2 Grid will address the future computing requirements of all the
U.K. Particle Physics Experiments and should provide efficient sharing of
resources between Particle Physics and other disciplines at the institutes."
added Steve Lloyd, GridPP collaboration board chair.
Grid computing shares the resources of connected computers, much as the
World
Wide Web (also created at CERN) enables the sharing of information between
computers. By connecting large numbers of computers together, particle
physicists are able to run simulations and analysis in a fraction of the time
it would take to run on a single machine. Such work can also be done on
supercomputers, but as these are custom built they are expensive and in high
demand. The benefit of Grid computing is that it is constructed from cheap
units and can be expanded or reduced to fit the users' needs.
Neil Geddes, PPARC's director of E-Science, said, "Today's money will be
used
to create a Grid equivalent to 20,000 1GHz personal computers. This is the
largest in the world to be funded so far."
For the past year, GridPP have been running a prototype Grid or "testbed"
across 10 United Kingdom sites. From this, they have developed the middleware
needed for a larger Grid.
"GridPP2 will test new Grid computing technologies on a scale that we could
have barely considered two years ago." said Tony Doyle, the GridPP project
leader. "The Grid deployed in phase 1 taught us about the importance of a
series of testbeds where the software is incrementally integrated and tested
within an annual deployment lifecycle. Running a stable large-scale Grid
service will be a major challenge and for this reason a key component of
GridPP2 will be the establishment a core production team at the heart of
deployment."
Middleware is the programming that allows the software (the programs the
scientists are using) to take advantage of the hardware (the computing
resources they need to access). Middleware tackles issues such as security
(e.g. allowing outside users access to a site's computers) and "brokering"
(breaking data up into packages to be sent around the country or even world
for rapid processing).
GridPP's testbed was incorporated into the LHC Computing Grid in September
2003, which was the first time a production Grid was deployed world-wide.
GridPP is also working with projects such as the EU-funded Enabling Grids for
E-Science in Europe which will integrate current national, regional and
thematic Grid efforts to create a seamless European Grid infrastructure for
the support of the European Research Area.
The experience gained in the GridPP project forms the basis of the much
wider
deployment of scientific computing Grids which we are seeing across U.K.
Universities through the United Kingdom's e-Science program. Industry has also
been quick to appreciate the benefits of these technologies.
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