Content about Infrastructure

  Feature - Thailand goes tera: scientists connect to the power of ThaiGrid ThaiGrid powers this tsunami simulation, run by a team from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and focusing on the potential effects of tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.Image courtesy of ThaiGrid Scientists across the globe are cranking up their computing requirements: they want more processing power to tackle ever more challenging problems. The wishes of Thai scientists recently came true when their first teraflop computing system went online as part of the Thai National Grid Project.“Our demand for computational power and storage is increasing rapidly,” says Putchong Uthayopas, director of the Thai National Grid Project. “We had a need for a national computational infrastructure that would allow researchers to discover and explore more challenging problems,” he says. “The Thai government decided that now was the right time to explore grids as a key infrastructure enabler.”80 systems across 15 sites Comprising 1

  Technology - Weka4WS: distributed data mining using web services The Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis, or WEKA, is software developed at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. It gets its four-letter acronym from New Zealand’s native weka, flightless brown birds about the size of a chicken. Stock image from sxc.hu Released in June 2007, Weka4WS is a new tool designed to open the way for worldwide use of data mining services. Developed at the University of Calabria Grid Computing Lab, Weka4WS extends the open source Weka toolkit for supporting distributed data mining on grid environments. The original Weka provides a large collection of machine learning algorithms, written in Java, for data pre-processing, classification, clustering, association rules and visualization, which can be invoked through a common Graphical User Interface. In Weka, the overall data mining process takes place on a single machine, since the algorithms can be executed only locally. Weka4WS extends Weka to support remote grid execution

  Feature - Data for the people: how to fast-track your network and share the data love “You don’t have to have a PhD to be interested in data and to want to analyze it. ” Bob Grossman is working to make large data sets easily accessible and publicly available, even to children.Stock image from sxc.hu So you’ve used a grid to split up your job, process it faster, then return your results. You now have a nice chunky terabyte of data. What do you do with it?Bob Grossman, Director of the National Center for Data Mining at the University of Illinois, Chicago, U.S., says the answer is share, share, share.“In terms of impact on society, the ability to use transparently other people’s data is going to be transforming,” Grossman says. “It is about ‘network effects’,” he continues. “In the same way that a network becomes more interesting as more people join it, you can draw more interesting conclusions about your own data if you put it into the context of other peo

  Feature - Going Mobile: Extending Grid to the Lower End Community-based applications may offer a ready doorway to the mass popularization of grid-related technologies.Image courtesy of Stavros IsaiadisThink your cell phone has nothing to contribute to grid services?  Think again. Stavros Isaiadis of the University of Westminster is working on the so-called “lower end” of the grid performance spectrum, as part of CoreGRID, and the university’s Distributed and Intelligent Systems Group, led by Vladimir Getov.“Grid usually revolves around high performance computing,” explains Isaiadis, “which means you need raw resources—things like CPU and memory. Framed like this, mobile devices can only make a very limited contribution.” But, Isaiadis asks, what about flexibility, agility, mobility? “Mobile devices can extend grids into areas where static grids can not go. You can leverage resources from many devices, like from WiFi hotspots or conference rooms, to create an ad ho

Statistic of the Week - 250 CERN computer center operator at an IBM 370 in the early 1980s.Image copyright CERNIn 1990 the CERN Computer Center contained less than 250 CERN Computing Units. The CERN Unit of processing power was a standard proposed in 1985 by Eric McIntosh of the CERN computing division, then called “DD” for Data-handling Division. One CERN Unit (CU) corresponded to the power of a single CPU of an IBM 370 Model 168, or to that of a DEC Vax 8600. It was based on execution speed of a standard set of HEP code assembled by McIntosh. This code set was later incorporated as part of the SpecINT standard, a world measure for CPU power which is in general use today.The CERN Unit was equivalent to about 4 Million floating point operations per second (i.e. 4 Mips), or roughly 2 units of the more modern SpecINT2000 standard.The approximate 250 CERN Units in 1990 came primarily from the IBM complex (about 150 units), the Cray XMP-48 (about 50) and the biggest DEC Vax, the Model 9000 (contributing about 10).

Feature - Pacific Rim Researchers Collaborate to Study Avian Flu Nations with confirmed cases of the H5N1 avian influenza as of February 2007.Source http://pandemicflu.govResearchers at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Hawaii will use bioinformatics, grid computing and networking infrastructure, as well as collaborative ties to Asian institutions, to learn more about avian flu, in hopes of helping to head off a much-feared pandemic in the region of the world where the disease has already cost human lives.“We will use modern high-throughput biology to annotate the biological structures of different subtypes of the avian influenza virus, at the same time as we study their variations,” said principal investigator Peter Arzberger, director of Life Science Initiatives at UC San Diego. “We will also construct a grid infrastructure to support avian flu research—an infrastructure that could one day handle research on other infectious diseases as well.”“Fighting a pandemic will

Feature - Grids Aid Battle Against Cancer A digital image such as this one, showing lesions in a patient's liver, can now be distributed among participating hospitals through a grid. Image courtesy of Ignacio BlanquerSpanish medical staff in the region of Valencia have a new weapon in the arsenal against cancer. In January, a team of medical and computing researchers launched a grid-enabled infrastructure that shares oncological studies, digital images and reports among five hospitals in the Valencia region.“In the field of oncology, quantification is very important for diagnosis,” says Ignacio Blanquer, associate professor of computer science and researcher in the High Performance Computing and Networking Group, at Universidad Politécnica de Valencia in Spain. “The more information the radiologist has at hand, the more objective and accurate the diagnosis.” On March 22, the team Blanquer works with, led by Vicente Hernandez, will present the deployment of CVIMO, the Valencian Cyberi

Feature - Ensuring a Grid Without Boundaries The EUGridPMA members at the CCLRC Coseners House in Abingdon, England.Image courtesy of PPARC.  With more than 30 national Grids in Europe alone, the European Policy Management Authority for Grid Authentication must ensure that electronic identities will work across any boundaries. At last month’s meeting, its first ever held in the UK, the growing EUGridPMA considered bids for accreditation from Europe and Africa.“I was very pleased to welcome the EUGridPMA to the UK for the first time, especially as the PMA expanded its horizons,” said David Kelsey of CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and GridPP in the UK. “We are now closer to enabling access to the grid to all scientists wherever they are located.”Kelsey was an original organizer of efforts to build international trust among grids. EUGridPMA is one of three regional PMA’s within the International Grid Trust Federation. IGTF establishes requirements and best practices for identity manageme

Feature: San Diego Supercomputer Experts HelpNavajos Build “An Internet to the Hogan” Leonard Tsosie (center), a Navajo senator and a leader of the Internet to the Hogan Project, uses a laptop to explain the project's benefits to friends at their traditional dwelling, or Hogan. Supercomputer experts from UC San Diego will help end the "digital divide" for many in the Navajo Nation in the Southwest.  Image courtesy of SDSC.Navajos in the American Southwest, many of whom have never had access to a personal telephone, will soon make a significant leap into the Internet Age, thanks in part to resources and expertise provided by the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego.The Navajos, who refer to themselves as the “Dine” (dee-nay), celebrated “An Internet to the Hogan and Dine Grid Event” on Monday, January 29, at Navajo Technical College in Crownpoint, New Mexico. Highlights of the event include their official acceptance of a “Little Fe&rdquo

Feature: Government to grid Aleksandar Belic (left) with EC Commissioner for Science & Research Janez Potočnik (center) during a visit to the Belgrade Institute of Physics. It is well known that countries like the UK and Germany have invested heavily in grid technology, but they are not alone. Countries in South Eastern Europe have also enthusiastically embraced grid technologies. Aleksandar Belic, head of the Scientific Computing Laboratory at the Institute of Physics in Belgrade, has been one of the leaders in bringing grid infrastructures to the region. Unusually for a scientist, Belic has governmental experience that has proved invaluable in his work with projects such as Enabling Grids for E-sciencE. “I spent three years as Assistant Minister of Science for Serbia, working on international collaborations,” says Belic. “I was very proud to have helped to pave the way for Serbian participation in the