Holding slide prior to starting show

The Grid : Infrastructureand Opportunities

Alex Hardisty

Grid Centre Manager

What is the Grid?

• Visions of Internet Computing:– Grid computing – Utility computing– IP dial tone– Pervasive or ubiquitous computing

• Much more than just a faster Internet– An emerging communication and computing

infrastructure ……for transparent sharing of distributed computing resources

Why Do We Need It?

• e-Science– “science increasingly done through

distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet, using very large data collections, tera-scale computing resources and high performance visualization.”

Collaborative Scientific Experiments

• Physicists collaborating in an international experiment need to share:– Experimental data and storage resources– Computers and software for extracting

information from this data– Computers and software for large-scale

computer simulations

Large Hadron Collider (CERN): raw data rate = 1 Petabyte/sec

Filtered rate = 100Mbyte/sec (1 Petabyte/year) = 1 Million CD ROMs ( ~200m3!)

Engineering Design

• Collaborating organisations need to share:– Digital blueprints of the design– Supercomputers for performing multi-

disciplinary simulations– Software and data for performing those

simulations

A new aircraft may involve 10,000 collaborating engineers

Crisis Management

• A crisis management team might be drawn from government, the emergency and health services, and academia. Need to share:– Information on the individuals who have caught

the disease– Information on the resources available to tackle

the infection– Epidemiological simulations to predict spread of

the infection under different assumptions

Bioterrorism - control and eradicate a virulent strain of disease

“Post-Genomic” Bioinformatics

• Increasing size, complexity and diversity of databases of biological information– Linkage and optimal exploitation

• Filtering results of micro-array experiments– 30 or 40 results out of 1 million

• Simulation of large molecules– Protein folding affects how drugs dock with

receptors

Wales Gene Park

Elements in Common• Coordinated problem solving

– Beyond client-server: distributed data analysis, computation, collaboration, …

– … Problem Solving Environments

• Resource sharing– Computers, data, instruments, networks

• Multi-institutional “virtual organisations”– Overlying traditional organisational structures– Large or small, static or dynamic

The Grid Vision

• Where this power is made available as "services" to users with differing levels of expertise

• Where "services" interact to perform specified tasks with a minimum of human intervention

Imagine a world in which computing power is as readily available as electrical power …..

Why is the Grid important?

• Gives access to more computing power• Makes more computing and data

resources more readily available• Permits collaborative working and

resource sharing through virtual organisations and communities

• Creates new economic resources, products and services

Benefits from the Grid

• Lower cost of computing

• Increased flexibility– to tackle large-scale problems

• Empowers individuals and organisations – towards better collaboration within and

between organisations

• Will enhance economic competitiveness, security and quality of life– engine for transformation in our personal lives, our

work, and our society

UK e-Science Programme• Spending Reviews

– 2000 : £98m for 3 years (+ £20m from DTI)– 2002 : Further £115m for years 4 & 5

• Development of key IT infrastructure to support e-Science • Managed by Research Councils & DTI

– Application specific Pilot Projects– Core programme to identify, develop and deploy generic Grid middleware

UK e-Science Network

RAL

National Centre in Edinburgh/Glasgow

8 regional centres Grid support centre

Cambridge

Newcastle

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Cardiff

Southampton

Belfast

Oxford

LondonHinxton(EBI)

ManchesterDL

Welsh e-Science Centre• Based at Cardiff University

– Department of Computer Science– Funded by DTI, WDA and CU

• Role:– Promote e-Science research and development

in Wales and South-west of England– Accelerate the adoption of e-Science & Grid

capabilities

http://www.wesc.ac.uk/

Our Role in Practice

• Provision of infrastructure

• Development of the technology

• Outreach to encourage:– Use of e-Science technologies by

researchers– Collaborative research projects– Technology transfer to industry

Resources

• “Monster Computing Power”– Locally: SUN, SGI, storage, visualisation– Resources of the “national grid” !– Access via Broadband

• Grid expertise for training and support– Full-time staff (4)– Related Researchers (~20)

Industry Collaborators

• Activeplan Solutions• Avantis World• BAE Systems• BTexact• Evotec• HP• SEA Group• SGI

• Discussions– Amersham Biosciences– BBC Nations & Regions– Clearspeed Technology– IBM– MIT Media Lab Europe

Projects

• Collaborative virtual teams• Resource-aware visualisation environment• Visual workflow composition environment• Workflow execution engine and resource

management• Agents negotiating to form consortia• Mechanisms for trusted Grid services

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise?

• e-Health– electronic patient records, distributed and/or

remote diagnosis, collaborative surgical planning• e-Business

– streamline, distribute, and enhance business processes

• e-Commerce– marketplace for both traditional and innovative

goods and services• e-Learning

– remove barriers to education and training

Governance and Democracy

• e-Democracy– involve citizens in the democratic processes of the

nation

• e-Government– transform relations between government and

citizens, businesses, and other arms of government

– better delivery of government services – empowerment through access to information

Based on people’s needs, not bureaucratic needs

Concluding Remarks

• The vision of the Grid and e-Science is ambitious and far-reaching

• The Grid is an engine for economic progress and social change driven by a confluence of technologies

• This is the start of the Grid era. It’s a long term programme