DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /    ( Table of Contents )

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SUN GRIDS POWER DIGITAL CAMPUSES WORLDWIDE

Sun Microsystems Inc, creator of Java software technology, announced it is leading the advance of Grid technologies on the digital campus and research facilities worldwide. From Delaware Biotechnology Institute at the University of Delaware, to University of Namur (Notre Dame) in Belgium, to Purdue University, the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas, and the National Central University in Taiwan, academia is turning to Sun's N1 Grid computing solutions to power its computing infrastructure and advance the academic research environment.

"Grid computing truly has taken off in the academic community and is beginning to move quickly into the commercial space. Out of 180 companies polled by our research firm, about a quarter of the respondents said they expect Grid technology to be either extremely important or very important to their IT infrastructure during the next few years," said Mary Turner from research firm Summit Strategies.

"Grid computing is critical not only to performance, but to productivity as well, in just about every industry. However, academia is really showing us the overall value and business benefits of Grid computing," said Stephen Perrenod, senior group manager of science and engineering at Sun Microsystems Inc. "The ability of academic research organizations to succeed through continued innovation and discovery is directly tied to effective use of their computing infrastructure, and Grid computing's ability to handle dynamically changing workloads makes this possible. Our customers can attest to the power of Sun N1 Grid computing first-hand."

Delaware Biotechnology Institute Harnesses State's Top Biotech Researchers

The Delaware Biotechnology Institute at the University of Delaware is leading the effort to build a state-wide biomedical research network which includes the state's higher education institutions and the state's largest hospital system. With this goal in mind, Delaware used Sun technology to install "Biowolf" for its BioIT center. Biowolf, which is ranked among the top 30 most powerful computers among United States academic institutions, is composed of a Sun Fire V60x Compute Grid rack system with 128 dual-processor nodes for computing tasks. The center also utilizes the Sun N1 Grid Engine Enterprise Edition and Sun Fire Control Station for overall system management. With the addition of Biowolf, Delaware is well positioned to attract outstanding facility and secure large collaborative grants, allowing researchers to conduct more ambitious studies such as protein folding, oncologene expression, and full-genome comparison to strive for scientific breakthroughs in the biotechnology arena.

University of Namur (FUNDP) Turns To Sun For Ease Of Integration

The University of Namur in Belgium (Notre Dame) came to Sun for its proven Linux clusters in order to construct a versatile Grid capable of performing the typical set of academic compute loads -- from optical property characterizations to supramolecular structure determinations. A combination of Sun N1 Grid and N1 Portal technologies enable users to log in and use these resources from anywhere, while automatically finding the most appropriate resource in the Grid, saving researchers time and increasing productivity.

Purdue University, Sun Build High Performance Classrooms

Utilizing Sun Grid technology, Sun and Purdue University in Indiana are currently collaborating on a project called the "High Performance Classroom," which enables students to use high performance computing as a utility to enable science, engineering and the humanities. A first-of-its-kind program, the High Performance Classroom is poised to take Grid computing to the next level by eliminating the barriers that traditionally come with using high performance computing. Immediate applications are in computer animation, GIS systems and computational chemistry. With Sun Grid technology installed, no longer do teachers have to limit the size of the projects they assign based on what a given computer can do. Instead, with the large memory cluster, consisting in part of five Sun Fire 6800 Servers with 24 UltraSPARC III 64-bit CPUs, students can do realistic work at a single session, giving teachers and students an increased capacity for learning and teaching.

TexasAdvanced Computing Center Advances TeraGrid Research

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas is one of the leading academic advanced computing centers in the United States. TACC's research and development activities focus on developing new computing techniques and technologies. Its advanced computing resources and services enable computationally intensive research in areas such as petroleum exploration, biotechnology, aerospace engineering, and climate modeling. Sun and TACC have recently become technology partners in a joint effort to research and develop a unique scientific visualization and data analysis system using a Sun Grid-enabled high-end visualization service that delivers on-demand and advanced reservation interactive usage. This system will become part of the resources dedicated to advance innovative research at a national level through the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid, the world's largest, most comprehensive, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research.

National Central University Builds First Campus Grid Environment In Taiwan

The National Central University (NCU) of Taiwan partnered with Sun to build a campus Grid Computing Center to optimize its school resources and help its professors with the technology needed to meet academic and research requirements. NCU is among the most prestigious research universities in Taiwan. The university now hosts nearly 10,000 students, among these one-third study in masters programs and 1,000 in doctoral programs. The Grid Computing Center will connect the entire campus and enable school resource sharing that covers seven colleges and 10 research centers. The platform is built on Sun Fire 6800 servers and Sun Fire V60x Compute Grid Rack systems, and utilizes Sun N1 Grid Engine software.

Sun And Grid Computing

Powering more than 7,000 Grids, Sun provides a fully-integrated solution for Grid computing, featuring Sun N1 Grid Engine software with Java combined with the powerful combination of robust Sun Fire servers and sophisticated distributed resource management software. Sun's Grid solutions create a more manageable and flexible infrastructure based on proven technologies that enable IT managers to increase server utilization by up to nine-fold in order to lower cost of the IT infrastructure per compute cycle, release products to market faster, and increase the quality of products and services.

Sun continues to innovate in the field of Grid computing. Sun's new Infrastructure Solution for Grid computing, www.sun.com/solutions/infrastructure/Grid, combines the services, reference architectures, Solaris and/or Linux compute nodes, storage, and software needed to set up a Grid computing environment faster, easier and at a lower cost than is possible with competitors' solutions.

About Sun Microsystems Inc

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems Inc to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at sun.com.