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April 1, 2015
Supporting research with grid computing and more

iSGTW interviews Jorge Gomes, member of the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) executive board, ahead of next month’s EGI Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. He explains why it is vital to support research with grid computing, as well as with a range of related IT services. “In order for researchers to be able to collaborate and share data with one another efficiently, the underlying IT infrastructures need to be in place,” says Gomes. “With the amount of data produced by research collaborations growing rapidly, this support is of paramount importance.”

March 25, 2015
SLALOM initiative will help cloud users negotiate twists and turns of ‘service-level agreements’

Industry analysts repeatedly point to uncertainty around legal issues as a major barrier to cloud adoption. The SLALOM initiative was launched earlier this year with the mission to help drive the uptake of cloud services with model service-level agreement (SLA) legal clauses and technical specifications. 

February 11, 2015
Enter Charity Engine's Million-Core Challenge

Video courtesy Charity Engine.

February 4, 2015
Developing cutting-edge ICT systems through public-private partnership

CERN openlab is a unique public-private partnership between CERN and leading ICT companies. Founded in 2001 to develop the innovative ICT systems needed to cope with the unprecedented computing challenges of the Large Hadron Collider, CERN openlab unites science and industry at the cutting edge of research and innovation.

CERN openlab recently entered its fifth phase, which will run until the end of 2017. Now, for the first time in its history, it has extended beyond the CERN community to include other major European and international research laboratories. 

November 5, 2014
HPC and big data in the 1950s, or how a British company selling tea and cakes owned the world's first office computer

Video courtesy Science Museum, London, UK.

November 5, 2014
Working with PRACE: an insider’s perspective

Professor Stephan Roche of the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Spain is one of the early adopters of high-performance computing in Europe’s Graphene Flagship initiative. His latest project has received 22 million core hours from PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe. 

Roche has fifteen years of experience in developing novel algorithms and computational approaches that can be used to investigate quantum transporting in complex materials such as graphene. Here, we speak to him about his experience of working with PRACE.

September 10, 2014
Grid computing aids study into post-traumatic stress among Afghanistan war veterans

The latest European Grid Infrastructure case study describes how researchers in The Netherlands have used the e-BioInfra Gateway to analyze brain scans from NATO soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. The team discovered that combat stress impairs cognition by affecting the midbrain and its link with the prefrontal cortex. While this effect was found to be largely reversible, it is thought that it could have an impact on the soldiers’ future social and cognitive functions.

July 9, 2014
CERN and UNESCO celebrate anniversary of CERN Convention

Last week, in a ceremony held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, CERN and UNESCO commemorated the signature of the CERN Convention and the subsequent 60 years of science for peace.

July 9, 2014
Grid computing aids battle to reduce groundwater toxicity

Researchers have used grid computing resources provided by Metacentrum, the Czech national grid infrastructure, to help design toxic-chemical-eating bacteria. The team used a combination of grid-powered mathematical modeling and laboratory experiments to design and test a five-step metabolic pathway for a new bacterium. The predictions of the model were used to create bacterial strains containing the optimal enzyme ratios, and the behavior of these real-life bacteria matched predictions closely. The key is to balance the activity of multiple enzymes to keep the bacterium alive, while sustaining a high processing rate.

February 12, 2014
Brain-inspired computing at ISC '14

Karlheinz Meier, one of the three co-directors of Europe’s Human Brain Project, will deliver a keynote talk at this summer's ISC'14 event in Leipzig, Germany.

Funded by the European Commission, the Human Brain Project is an ambitious endeavor, with the intention of greatly advancing the understanding of the human brain using cutting-edge computer technologies.

January 8, 2014
Tim Bell on the importance of OpenStack for CERN

Last month, local OpenStack users from France and Switzerland held a meeting at CERN. iSGTW discusses the event with Tim Bell, a member of the OpenStack management board and leader of the Operating Systems and Infrastructure Services group within CERN’s IT department. Bell explains the vital role OpenStack plays in enabling CERN to flexibly tailor its computing resources to meet demand, as well as its importance for other organizations across the globe.

May 15, 2013
CERN Computer Centre expands

A significant expansion of the CERN Computer Centre was inaugurated last week. The project, for which construction work began in April 2011, has seen the addition of a new computer room housing 90 new racks of servers, enabling critical systems to be decoupled from those deemed non-critical.

January 23, 2013
The future for science in Europe is bright – and full of clouds!

It may be named after a dying star, but the Helix Nebula project is very much alive. Now half way through its pilot phase, the project is moving ahead with new organizations coming on board.

November 28, 2012
The continuing question of exascale

Extreme science continues to advance, making increased computational resources critical to ongoing discovery. The role of exascale systems in this advancement remains a question, as does the US role in moving exascale forward.

October 31, 2012
Tech transfer – a computing success story?

Scientific computation is a research field with an excellent track record when it comes to technology and knowledge transfer. Now, with the global economic crisis taking its toll on public science budgets, the need for other research communities to learn from this example has never been greater.

September 12, 2012
Smartphone grids – the future for distributed computing?

With the popularity of smartphones soaring, it's time grid computing projects tapped into this valuable resource, say researchers from Germany.

August 15, 2012
How grid computing helped CERN hunt the Higgs

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past month, you're almost certainly aware that on 4 July scientists at CERN announced they had discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson. However, what you may not know is that distributed computing played a crucial role in the race towards this discovery.

August 15, 2012
Postcards from Mars – but how did they get here?
Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. 

March 30, 2011
Two opinions on grids and clouds

It wasn't Colonel Mustard, with the lead pipe, in the library. It was a pair of posts.