Special Features:

NCSA JOINS GLOBUS ALLIANCE

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has joined the Globus Alliance, a consortium dedicated to the collaborative design, development, testing and support of the open source Globus Toolkit.

The Globus Toolkit is the de facto standard Grid software. It provides key enabling software and services that let people share computing power, databases, and other tools securely online across corporate, institutional, and geographic boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy. It has been deployed broadly worldwide for both science and industry.

"NCSA is a world leader in high-performance computing and has been involved in the evolution of Grid technologies from the very beginning," NCSA interim director Robert Pennington said. "The relationship between NCSA and the Globus Toolkit development team, along with NCSA's contributions to the advancement of Grid technologies are a testament to our interest, commitment and capabilities."

NCSA brings to the Globus Alliance both its experience in engaging with scientific communities -- the ultimate beneficiaries of Grid technology -- and its expertise in Grid deployment. NCSA led the systems integration team that developed the NEESgrid, a nationwide cyberinfrastructure that links earthquake researchers across the United States with leading-edge computing resources and research equipment, allowing collaborative teams (including remote participants) to plan, perform, and publish their experiments. NCSA is also one of the founding partners in the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid project, which is building and deploying the world's largest, most comprehensive, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research.

NCSA has also developed Grid tools for usability, including the Grid Packaging Toolkit (GPT), MyProxy, and GSI-OpenSSH. GPT is the packaging tool used for most of the Globus Toolkit; it allows release updates and fixes to be sent with minimal effort. MyProxy is the de facto standard mechanism for managing and enabling portability of GSI credentials; it is deployed globally as a key component for securing Grid portals. GSI-OpenSSH is a modification of the standard Secure Shell tools to support authentication using GSI; it is in common use in a number of production Grid deployments, including the TeraGrid.

In addition to NCSA, other members of the Globus Alliance governing board are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI), the University of Chicago, the University of Edinburgh, and the Swedish Center for Parallel Computers. The governing board takes on ultimate responsibility for Globus Toolkit design and governance.

For more information, see www.globus.org/.