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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, IBM TO BUILD
LARGEST CAMPUS GRID
IBM and The University of Texas announced plans to build the largest
university Grid computing project in the nation. UT Grid, led by the Texas
Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at UT, will unite the vast computational
resources of the nation's largest university campus, boasting more than 50,000
students and some 20,000 faculty and staff members.
TACC will lead the construction of UT Grid in partnership with the
university's Information Technology Services (ITS) department, the Institute
for Computational and Engineering Sciences (ICES), the Center for
Instructional Technologies (CIT) and the College of Engineering.
UT Austin Vice President for Research Juan Sanchez hailed the launch as "an
important step forward for the campus as a whole and all of its many
scientific researchers, for whom Grid-based computing is becoming the best way
of accessing information and collaborating with researchers around the world.
UT Grid is a model of world-class academic and industry organizations
collaborating for goals that will benefit society."
Grid computing unites tens, hundreds, or even thousands of computers at
different locations. The result is a "virtual" system that dramatically
changes the landscape of research by boosting compute power and speed to
previously unattainable levels.
UT Grid will connect computing resources across the university, from the
high-end supercomputers at TACC down to personal computers. Researchers,
educators and students will have unprecedented access to massive computing
power for simulations, data sharing and data-intensive calculations in
scientific areas ranging from climate modeling, petroleum exploration and
environmental remediation to genomics. UT Grid users will be able to tackle
the most challenging computational problems.
In addition to computers, UT Grid will integrate access to research
databases,
educational materials, Web servers and scientific instruments such as imaging
scanners, microscopes and telescopes. By virtualizing such diverse resources,
UT Grid will enable significant scientific advances and foster innovative
educational programs.
"The University of Texas and IBM share a vision of the ability of Grid
computing to tackle the world's most complex scientific, technical and
business challenges," said Albert Bunshaft, vice president of Grid Sales and
Business Development at IBM. "Working together, we look forward to exploiting
the full potential of open standard's based Grid computing technologies for
both research and education at UT Austin."
"UT Austin researchers are world leaders in many areas of science and
engineering. We look forward to seeing what new problems they can solve using
UT Grid, as well as the new paradigms that faculty and students develop to use
UT Grid in education," said Jay Boisseau, director of TACC.
UT Grid incorporates a number of unique features developed by UT and IBM
researchers. GridFlow, software developed by TACC, will help campus
researchers visualize data wherever they may be, in real time. Another
capability is "Roundup," a sub-Grid of ordinary PCs across the campus and
"volunteered" PCs belonging to faculty, staff and students. Software supplied
for Roundup by United Devices enables the smooth collaboration of any number
of these machines, whose spare cycles are in effect a loosely coupled
supercomputing resource that can be devoted to scientific problems requiring
myriad repetitive computations. Within several years, Boisseau expects that
tens of thousands of PCs, laptops and other devices may be linked by Roundup
into UT Grid.
The UT Grid Portal, based on TACC's GridPort3 Grid portal toolkit, will
enable
direct use of all UT Grid systems. GridPort3 will also be used to construct
specialized science portals that let campus researchers and educators harness
the power of UT Grid for their specific applications and visualization
needs.
IBM and TACC will co-develop Grid application software using the Web
Services-Resources Framework and Web Services-Notification specifications
announced recently at GlobusWorld in San Francisco, the major conference of
organizations working to establish open standards and advance Grid
computing.
In addition, UT plans to link UT Grid to other major Grid projects,
including
the Texas Internet Grid for Research and Education (TIGRE) and the National
Science Foundation's TeraGrid, the world's largest, most comprehensive,
distributed infrastructure for open scientific research. Coupling TACC and IBM
leadership in Grid computing, UT and IBM have a unique opportunity to explore
Grid scalability issues, and to apply insights gained from one Grid to the
other Grids.
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