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The Personal Information Technology Report

October 22, 2002

In this issue:

GGF = Get in on the Ground Floor

A select list of current grid computing projects

Select start-ups in grid computing, software and applications

GGF = Get in on the Ground Floor

The story in brief: Grid computing presents enormous opportunities for operators of backbone networks. The top names in computers and information technology are already on board. But only three network service providers have taken part in grid initiatives. What do they know that others don't? 

We already have distributed applications, distributed intelligence and distributed storage. The final component of the networked economy may be distribution of computing power, or grid computing.

Think of grid computing as parallel processing and the Internet backbone taken to their logical conclusion. In parallel processing, a supercomputer assigns computational tasks to a number of processors, all of which work on the operation in tandem. A grid extends that idea over the worldwide Internet and allows one computer application or program to allocate processing tasks to other stand-alone computers in either a hierarchical or peer-to-peer arrangement.

From a practical standpoint, it means the mainframes that an aerospace company uses in California to run simulations on jet engine designs can call on the processing power of desktop PCs in a branch office in Singapore after the staff has gone home for the night.

On an individual user level, grids can combine the processing power of a huge number of nodes to create huge virtual interactive environments that can support millions of users at one time. This has attracted computer game designers such as Butterfly.net, which is working with IBM on using grids for massively multiplayer online gaming  (see First person shooters and other uses for the grid). 

As a developing technology, grid computing draws momentum from three current telecom market trends: the growth of non-hierarchical computer architectures; the leveraging of inexpensive bandwidth to create and manage remotely complex distributed applications with a standard set of software tools; and the shift in control to enterprises of the direction and pace of network evolution.

A 40 Gb/s opportunity 

Grid computing also presents an opportunity for backbone network operators to offer scalable bandwidth and dynamic provisioning at scales of 40 Gb/s and higher. If there was ever a time to get involved, this is it. There are some twenty grids and grid applications projects in place worldwide - mostly under the control of universities, research laboratories and government agencies. But a number of companies, including Boeing and General Motors, have set up grids for internal research and development. The Global Grid Forum (GGF) expects that within 12 to 24 months major companies in the pharmaceutical, aerospace and automotive sectors will begin to introduce grids into their mainstream information technology operations.

This pending explosion has galvanized the GGF. This group, made up mostly of academicians and computer scientists, is suddenly faced with the task of creating an industry. Last week's GGF meeting in Chicago, its sixth since its founding in 1998, was held purely to address nuts-and-bolts issues such as the creation of working groups and procedures for hammering out standards. 

"We're building a community," said Charlie Catlett, GGF chairman and a senior fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, during the meeting's plenary session. "But we are beyond the stage of grassroots management."

Regrettably, participation in GGF by public network service providers is poor. Level 3 Communications, Qwest Communications International and NTT are the only ones who have taken an interest in grid computing and the GGF's work. That leaves the field to largely to IBM, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and Fujitsu, all of whom have begun to form relationships with smaller software start-ups, such as Entropia, Avaki and inSORS Integrated Communciations. Together, they are targeting the high-end enterprises that will form the first wave of commercial grid users. 

Level 3, however, is treating grid computing as a watershed opportunity. "Here's a chance for us to work with the GGF to participate in determining how the network needs to be positioned to springboard into the commercial sector," says Geoff Jordan, director of Level 3's Research and Education market channel at Level 3 Communications. As grid computing moves out of the university and lab environment, Jordan says, "We want to be sure there's a network ready to use." 

Right now, Level 3 is providing dark fiber for the National Science Foundation's Distributed Terascale Facility, or TeraGrid, but both Jordan and Paul Fernes, director of commercial development for the Research and Education channel, want Level 3 to be more than just a supplier of fat pipes. The large-scale distributed computing power that grids need will require providers to provision bandwidth expeditiously and get it to users dynamically, says Fernes. This quality of service issue has always been a value proposition for backbone providers. It only becomes even more critical when dynamic bandwidth allocation becomes tied to the extraordinary demands for computational power that grids will have. 

'Gold' and 'Platinum'

Level 3, along with NTT, is a "Gold" level GGF sponsor, contributing at least $10,000 a year to the organization. Qwest, which did not follow-up on interview requests, is a Platinum level member, contributing a minimum of $25,000 per year.

Given the general reluctance carriers have for any spending, plus the precarious financial situation of both Level 3 and Qwest, these commitments speak volumes about how these carriers view grid computing as strategic to their future business.

Over the next two years, the GGF will be formulating the basic foundation of standards about how the largest computers will "talk amongst themselves" over the Internet. Much of this work will build on standards already created by agencies such as the International Telecommunciation Union and the Internet Engineering Task Force. 

Other carriers should pay attention, if not actively take part. Certainly GGF is looking for as wide participation as it can get. "There are really important grid issues going unaddressed because the right set of people is not there right now," said Catlett.

The GGF's mission, as laid out by Catlett, has four elements:

Create specifications and community, establishing best practices to implement grid systems and software.

Create pre-specifications and identify where new research groups may be needed.

Become a technology conduit between long-term research, exploratory development and commercial application.

Develop and manage architectures and frameworks to bring coherence to multiple frameworks.

The potential of grid computing has also attracted manufacturers of network infrastructure, such as Cisco Systems and Ciena, who see this as a new channel into large-scale enterprises. Ciena, for example, is supplying the 40 Gb/s systems to the TeraGrid and a TeraGrid-affiliated project, Starlight TAP.

"It's fun again," says Mike Aquino, Ciena's vice president - U.S. Federal Government Sales and Support. Aquino's division is charged with selling optical networking equipment directly to the U.S. government. It is part of Ciena's shift in marketing strategy as it searches for new sources of revenue beyond the carrier market. "It's always been about the plumbing, and applications drive the plumbing," he says, referring to the grid's requirement for scalable network capacity. "These applications will need fast plumbing."

--Steven Titch

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A select list of current grid computing projects

Grids funded by the National Science Foundation

Distributed Terascale Facility (TeraGrid): 
Argonne National Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and San Diego Supercomputer Center operate a distributed Linux cluster-based grid system with a 40 Gb/s cross-country fiber optic backbone connection supported by Qwest and Level 3. 

National Technology Grid 
The NSF-sponsored National Computational Science Alliance is working to prototype a seamless, integrated computational and collaborative environment called the National Technology Grid, comprised of a computational grid and an access grid. 

Grids funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE):

DOE Science Grid 
The DOE Science Grid aims to provide an advanced distributed computing infrastructure based on Grid middleware and tools to enable the scalability in scientific computing necessary for DOE to accomplish its missions in science. The vision is to revolutionize the use of computing in science by making the construction and use of large scale systems of diverse resources as easy as using today's desktop environments. 

Distance and Distributed Computing and Communication (DisCom2)
DisCom2 is developing technologies and infrastructure for efficient use of high-end computing platforms at a distance. Goals include developing technologies and infrastructure for efficient use of high-end computing platforms at a distance and creating flexible distributed systems that can provide both capacity and capability computing.

European Union-funded grids 

EuroGrid
An EU-sponsored project to deploy a Grid testbed among multiple European high-performance computing laboratories, focusing on a suite of applications including biomolecular simulation, weather prediction, coupled computer-aided engineering simulations, structural analysis and real-time data processing.

DataGrid
The DataGrid objective is to build the next generation computing infrastructure providing intensive computation and analysis of shared large-scale databases involving volumes measured in terabytes to petabytes (1,024 terabytes) across widely distributed scientific communities. 


Grid applications projects

Globus Project
Project bases: University of Chicago, California Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory.

Among other initiatives, the Globus Project provides software tools that make it easier to build computational grids and grid-based applications. Collectively called the Globus Toolkit, the tools provide authorization and accounting functions, allocate hardware resources, and configure game-specific logic and monitors performance on the grid.

Access Grid
Project base: National Center for Supercomputing Application (NCSA)
Access Grid is the ensemble of resources that can be used to support human interaction across the grid. It consists of multimedia display, presentation and interaction environments and interfaces to grid middleware and visualization environments. Access Grid will support large-scale distributed meetings, collaborative work sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials and training. 

Condor Workload Management System
Project base: University of Wisconsin
Condor provides a job queuing mechanism, scheduling policy, priority scheme, resource monitoring, and resource management. Users submit their serial or parallel jobs to Condor, Condor places them into a queue, chooses when and where to run the jobs based upon a policy, carefully monitors their progress, and ultimately informs the user upon completion.

Gridbus
Project base: University of Melbourne.

The key objective of the Gridbus project is to develop fundamental, next-generation cluster and grid technologies that support true utility-driven service-oriented computing. The following initiatives are being carried out as part of the Gridbus project: grid economy and scheduling, cluster economy and scheduling, grid simulation toolkit, peer-to-peer compute power market.

Legion
Project base: University of Virginia
Legion is an object-based, meta-systems software project addressing grid issues such as scalability, programming ease, fault tolerance, security and site autonomy. 

National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI)
Project base: NSF
Eight universities are participating in a closely coordinated effort to deploy and evaluate the initiative's middleware. The NMI Integration Testbed is part of NMI's overall effort to develop and disseminate software that allows scientists and educators to share applications, scientific instruments, and data across the Internet. Their efforts will gauge middleware's practicality, emphasizing factors such as performance, ease of use, robustness, and technical support.

For additional information about these and other grid projects, contact the Global Grid Forum, www.ggf.org

E-mail: office@ggf.org. 

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Select start-ups in grid computing, software and applications

Avaki Corp.
1 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
+1 617 374 2500
www.avaki.com

Manufactures Avaki 2.5, a comprehensive grid software that helps organizations provide wide-area access to processing, data, and application resources across locations and administrative domains with different hardware, operating systems, and system configurations. The company also offers professional services to help organizations analyze requirements and implement grids. Founded 1998 as Applied MetaComputing.

Butterfly.net Inc.

224 W. King Street

Martinburg, WV 25401

+1 304 260 9520

www.butterfly.net

Developer of the Butterfly grid, which assembles and unites on-line gaming environments across numerous servers, creating a single inclusive virtual environment in which all players participate.

Entropia Inc.
10145 Pacific Heights Boulevard
Suite 800
San Diego, CA 92121
+1 858 623 2840
www.entropia.com
Manufactures the DCGrid, an open, secure and enterprise-scalable PC grid computing environment that manages, schedules, deploys, and executes compute-intensive applications. Founded 1997.

InSORS Integrated Communications Inc.
111 W. Jackson Boulevard
Suite 1412
Chicago, IL 60604

www.insors.com

Develops, markets, and supports enterprise collaboration software and solutions for Access Grid that enable multiple groups and individuals to collaborate via audio, video, and data modes of interaction. Founded 1998.

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Who’s Seizing the Day?

TitchOnline.com’s Carpe Diem List 2002 profiles the top 20 public and private companies that are confronting  the dramatic changes in telecommunications and information technology and boldly embracing new opportunities that are arising as the industry shifts toward broadband, portability and large-scale interactivity.

The Carpe Diem List is a valuable resource for readers seeking real-world insight into how innovative service providers, vendors and software developers are changing their business strategies to succeed in a market where the premium is on personal information technology, applications customization and service ubiquity.

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