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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Applications:
AUSTRALIAN PARTNERSHIP FOR ADVANCED COMPUTING GETS $29 MILLION
The Australian Government Minister for Education, Science and Training,
Brendan Nelson, announced the funding of $29 million for the next stage of the
Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC).
The chair of the APAC Board, David Beanland, welcomed the announcement. "The
Australian Government's support recognizes APAC's achievements in
strengthening Australia's advanced computing capabilities through cooperation
across the research and higher education sector", he said.
As a result of this support, the eight APAC partners have extended their
commitment to the national partnership and to providing advanced computing and
Grid services for the Australian research community.
Beanland noted that the announcement by Nelson represents another Australian
Government initiative to significantly enhance the national advanced
computing, communications and information infrastructure. He commended the
Australian Government for taking the lead in substantially improving
Australia's research infrastructure.
The APAC executive director, John O'Callaghan, said that the Australian
Government funds will dramatically increase the computational capacity of the
APAC National Facility, perhaps by a factor of 10. This increase is necessary
for the National Facility to keep pace with the increasing demand for advanced
computing systems in Australia.
The funds will also enable APAC to provide a new range of Grid services to
support collaboration amongst research communities nationally as well as
internationally.
Examples of applications that might use the APAC Grid include biotechnologists
at different locations simultaneously visualizing and discussing the folding
pattern of a protein, and engineers at remote locations cooperatively
conducting a new experiment for an airfoil in a wind tunnel.
APAC has been strengthening links with other groups overseas including the US
TeraGrid and the U.K. eScience programs to ensure that the APAC Grid will be
installed in a compatible way with overseas initiatives. This will allow
Australian researchers to increase their role and participation in
international research programs.
O'Callaghan said that the Australian Government support will enable APAC to
play a national role in delivering essential components of the emerging
international eResearch environment.
With support from the Australian Government, the Australian Partnership for
Advanced Computing (APAC) was established in June 2000 to strengthen
Australia's advanced computing infrastructure and expertise for the Australian
research community. APAC is a national partnership of eight organizations
involving 27 universities. The partners are:
- Australian Centre for Advanced Computing and Communications (ac3).
- CSIRO.
- Queensland Parallel Supercomputing Foundation (QPSF).
- South Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (SAPAC).
- The Australian National University (ANU).
- The University of Tasmania acting as host for the Tasmanian Partnership
for Advanced Computing (TPAC).
- Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC).
- Western Australian Interactive Virtual Environments Centre (IVEC).
The collective investment in advanced computing infrastructure by APAC and its
partners is estimated to be over $80 million during 2001-3. Over $30 million
of this total is being provided by state governments.
The major achievements of APAC and its partners to date have been:
The establishment of the partnership to coordinate and strengthen the
development of the advanced computing infrastructure for Australian research. The peak computing system at the APAC National Facility started operation
in April 2001 -- it is ranked number 164 in the current TOP500 list of most
powerful computers in the world. Over 1,800 users have accessed the advanced computing services provided by
the National Facility and the partner facilities. Over 110 projects are being conducted to support users of these facilities
and to develop professional expertise in 13 "computational science" themes. Over 50 university courses and modules have been delivered in
computational science and engineering at 18 universiites. APAC and five partners are participating in the GrangeNet program, which
started in March 2002 to demonstrate advanced communications and Grid services
on a multi-gigabit broadband network.
Thus APAC and its partners have made significant achievements in establishing
and operating Australia's advanced computing infrastructure, in strengthening
the skills to develop and use this infrastructure, and in developing
cooperative relationships between research organizations.
The Australian Government has announced a grant of $29 million to support the
next stage of APAC from 2004 to 2006. The funds will consolidate the position
of APAC as a national partnership with a broad base of commitment and
participation from Australia's higher education and research sector.
In its next stage, the mission of APAC will be: "Providing the advanced
computing and Grid infrastructure for eResearch."
The rapidly growing dependence on the computational approach to research is
requiring access to powerful computers, mass data storage systems, interactive
visualization systems and high-speed Internet services.
In response to this need, APAC has installed a world-class computing facility
at the Australian National University for researchers throughout Australia.
The facility is providing a service to around 250 projects involving 779
researchers from around Australia. Some examples of research using the
facility include:
- Simulating photosynthesis in artificial plants that may lead to clean
sources of electrical energy.
- Understanding the mechanisms of ion movement which regulate electrical
activity in the brain and other cells in our bodies.
- Modeling the performance of new materials including steel, light alloys
and composites for car manufacturing.
- Simulating climate change over the past 20,000 years to develop scenarios
for future environmental changes.
- Understanding the formation of galaxies to explain the patterns of heavy
elements in stars.
- Simulating water flow around objects that may produce designs for quieter
ships.
The demand for computing systems with more capabilities has been traditionally
driven by the need to model and simulate natural systems and processes, for
example in chemistry, physics, biology, geophysics and the environment. There
is now an increasing demand to access large-scale scientific and technical
data sets particularly as a result of applications such as fraud detection,
risk assessment, market information, intelligence gathering and security.
The Australian Government funding will enable the capabilities of the systems
at the APAC National Facility to be dramatically increased, fueling new
approaches to research problems and new solutions of benefit to Australian
industry and society.
The Australian Government funding will also enable APAC and its partners to
develop and install a "Grid" infrastructure integrating the APAC and partner
facilities. The APAC Grid will allow Australian researchers to get seamless
access to the computational and data resources in the National Facility as
well as a new range of services to support research collaboration, nationally
and internationally.
The Grid will also allow researchers to work cooperatively using advanced
visualization and virtual reality systems.
The Grid infrastructure will build on the emerging standards and tools that
are being developed for Grids in other countries. The APAC Grid will therefore
increase cooperation between Australian research groups and the participation
of Australian researchers in international research programs.
The Australian Government funding will also enable APAC to continue its
support for education and training courses in computational science and
engineering. The courses are attracting hundreds of students in science,
engineering and information technology. APAC will also continue to work with
industry associations on activities that raise the awareness and increase the
uptake of advanced computing in Australian industry.
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