CISE Research Infrastructure: A Research Infrastructure for Collaborative, High-Performance Grid Applications

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

0202048 Wise, David S. Indiana University - Bloomington RI: A Research Infrastructure for Collaborative, High-Performance Grid Applications This project, developing an experimental infrastructure for distributed high performance computing, supports ten research projects extending the location-transparency that the Grid provides for computation resources to the full spectrum of activities which end-users require. Services being explored include software development, parallel code middleware, distributed software components for scientific computing, security for parallel remote method invocation, managing large-scale data streams, and collaboration methodologies. The research builds on and extends the institutions collaborations with several national Grid research teams. In contrast to existing national and university infrastructure available through production machines, this research requires an environment tolerant of experimental network protocols, temporary middleware, and other system-level changes. The infrastructure will contribute to the following research projects: a. Opie: basic work on parallel matrix algorithms that achieve high efficiency across many architectural platforms b. LAM: middleware MPI implementations supporting hierarchical and fault-tolerant parallel computing c. dQUOB: application of SQL queries to live data streams d. RMI Security: basic research into security mechanisms for remote method invocation, allowing security to be traded off with efficiency e. HPJ: High Performance Java creating a language platform for portable high performance coding f. Grid Broker: reliable, robust publish/subscribe service for introducing fault tolerance into the distributed Grid environment g. Community Grids Collaboratory: advanced collaboration capabilities with applications to both distance education and distributed communities h. Xports: design of methodologies for remote instrument access and data management of the resulting extremely large data sets i. Software Components: distributed software component model designed for applications that use parallel computing "nodes" in wide-area Grid environments j. Science Portals: set of tools that allow programmers to build Grid distributed applications accessed and controlled from desktop environments and web browsers Major improvements to infrastructure supporting all these projects include a 16-node cycle server and a large-scale file server as well as network upgrades to and within the building.