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Grid computing begins to realise its international potential

Posted on 5 July 2005

Virtual Research collaboration is being taken to a new level with the first international, interdisciplinary computer Grid. It has been established by the Worldwide Universities Network -- at five sites in three countries more than 5,000 miles apart.

Grid computing is a new generation of shard computation and WUNgrid represents a major step forward in demonstrating that it can be delivered on an international basis.

Using Signal Data Search technology from the DAME project, WUNgrid harnesses the processing power of computers held at five WUN sites - the University of California San Diego (UCSD), the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, and the Universities of Southampton, Bergen and Manchester.

WUNgrid will help to realise the vision of virtual communities of academics from across the globe using data and computers, irrespective of where they are located. The DAME technology resulted from a flagship UK project aimed at supporting distributed diagnostics of aero engine data for Rolls-Royce developed with the Universities of York (lead partner), Sheffield, Leeds and Oxford. Professor Jim Austin commented, "This is the first time the DAME technology has been operational internationally and applied to a new domain - in this case search and analysis of heart data, it represents a significant step forward for Grid technology".

For many years, similar interdisciplinary collaboration has been the preserve of large infrastructure project communities, such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). Now, thanks to the WUN initiative, the benefits can be spread across the research landscape, with a high return and at low cost.

A key part of the project is the use of the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) - a functioning grid technology developed by UCSD designed to manage data across different computer systems.

The grid will substantially enhance the impact of the research by allowing access to data collections on a global basis

Dr David Pilsbury

The partners set up an academic and technical virtual team to link five independent data grids to share information. Each site established its own data grid using local storage repositories and the five grids are linked - information managed by a data grid in Bergen, for example, can be accessed through its counterpart in Manchester. The project allows researchers to assemble collections spread across multiple storage resources and data grids in five institutions.

The project provides a mechanism to create and sustain international, interdisciplinary communities while fostering joint working to capitalise on complementary expertise. User communities have been included in WUNgrid's development from the start.

WUN's Chief Executive, Dr David Pilsbury said: "The powerful combination of internationally recognized researchers at WUN member institutions, substantial research collections and the leading technology of the WUNgrid infrastructure will bring exciting and innovative collaborative research opportunities.

"The grid will substantially enhance the impact of the research by allowing access to data collections on a global basis. This new generation of information transfer is essential to maintain a global research effort."

Eventually, WUNgrid will be extended to include sites in the Far East through WUN partners in China, and the organisation's links with the Pacific Rim Applications and Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA).

Further information on WUNgrid can be found at www.wungrid.org

Notes to editors:

  • The Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) is an international alliance of leading higher education institutions. Building on a commitment to research quality and innovation which unites all its partners, WUN aims to develop collaborations of substance and depth in interdisciplinary areas of global significance
  • Once the preserve of high performance computing and specialized scientific problem-solving grid computing is now emerging as a key technology infrastructure, even more powerful and more promising than the Internet for future research in medicine, in the social sciences and in the arts and humanities.
  • WUNgrid is an initiative which brings together the international research expertise at the member institutions in WUN to work on a series of innovative collaborative projects which are made possible by the emerging grid technology. The partner institutions of the Worldwide Universities Network are international leaders in Grid and eScience projects. They are also holders and guardians of substantial institutional archives and research collections of significance to the wider research community.
  • DAME is a project that has developed a distributed search and pattern-matching technology (Signal Data Explorer) used for the analysis of large and complex distributed data primarily in diagnostics tasks. The project has been collaboration between the Universities of York, Sheffield, Leeds and Oxford as well as Rolls-Royce, Data Systems and Solutions and Cybula Ltd - a York University spin-off company. The project was funded by the UK's EPSRC under the eScience initiative. The Signal Data Explorer (SDE), Pattern Match and search technology has been demonstrated with the WUN Grid for, in this case, searching ECG data from the heart. More details of DAME can be found at www.cs.york.ac.uk/dame/ or by contacting Professor Jim Austin - (+44) 1904 432734

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David Garner
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