Dr Marc Molinari, Southampton Regional e-Science Centre, School of Engineering Sciences, looks at the increasing demand for Grid computing

Molinari, Marc

Southampton (e-Prints Soton)

173Information TechnologyScience and technologyfor the futureThe Southampton Regional e-Science Centre was setup in the autumn of 2001 as one of eight regionale-Science Centres networked across the UK. The aim ofthe e-Science Centre is to provide a focus for e-Science activ-ity in the South and West. As part of the University ofSouthampton, we actively contribute to numerous local,national and international e-Science research and develop-ment activities. Currently, we are at a stage where some of theinitial projects have successfully finished, others are still ongo-ing, and a number of new ones have been started based on theknowledge and experience gained from previous projects.The demand for Grid computingCurrent and future research, both in academia and industry,have a high demand for computational power due to theincreasing complexity of the models and processes involved.Areas such as climate prediction, traffic flow modelling,multi-centric medical imaging, the simulation of bio-molecu-lar, chemical, engineering, geological and nano-scale physicalprocesses require computational and data storage facilities,which allow the extraction of results in timescales that wouldpreviously not have been possible. Predicting models beforethey happen in nature, or simulating outcomes of experi-ments before expensive implementation or fabrication takesplace often offers a leading edge over competitors.The computational Grid connects together computers, data-bases and researchers across the UK and worldwide. One of thekey aspects of the Grid is that users do not need to be aware ofthe details of how a system is constructed to be able to makeuse of it. Thus, it allows researchers to make use of the poweravailable to tackle problems of greater complexity in smallertimeframes than would have been possible before. The functionof the Grid is to allow researchers to make use of its capabilitiesfrom the desktop of the user in a flexible and easy to use fash-ion. The Grid can satisfy demand for computing resources in atimely and secure way, and can thus lead to wider researchcoverage and more efficient commercial solutions.Past and futureHigh performance computational facilities in the past werelimited and, thus, access was restricted to a small number ofresearchers with very specific and narrow questions on dataevaluations and simulations. The Grid infrastructure aims tocombine large pools of processing power, data storage, het-erogeneous networks and operating systems, and distributedapplications and web services. A new era of computing hasbegun. With relatively easy access to these large resources,researchers are now able to run simulations and data queriesin a fraction of the time it required a few years ago. Severalthousands of compute jobs whose execution can be distrib-uted nationwide can be performed in parallel and thus reducethe run-time by an equally large factor. The ultimate aim ofcurrent developments is to make this vast technology as eas-ily accessible as possible for a large number of end-users suchthat the power of the compute Grid can be used transpar-ently in their applications. The investment in the last fouryears in UK e-Science has enabled us to make a huge leapforward in this sector. The challenge for the future is now tobring the technology to more industrial users once it has beenfully integrated into standard packaged software. Demandfrom industry in Grid technology is on the rise as a recentpublication in BusinessWeek (18th October 2004) shows. Moreand more companies are farming out jobs to groups of net-worked computers, which enable them to more easily identifygood designs in engineering, make more accurate forecastsand react much more quickly to situations that have beensimulated. To seamlessly integrate hardware and softwaremade by different companies into the daily workflow ofindustrial users will give the end-user the often necessaryleading edge over competitors. Data transfer, compute power,web services and knowledge management on the Grid willform the next generation of the internet as we know it.Grid activities and projects atSouthamptonThe University of Southampton has recently procured a highperformance cluster with over 800 processors, most of whichare AMD Opteron processors from IBM, which were suppliedand integrated by OCF. This ‘super computer’ contributes asignificant capacity to the national Grid infrastructure. Inaddition to this Linux-based cluster, the University has inte-grated over 1,800 processors in a large desktop-basedWindows workstation pool, whose idle cycles are available toresearchers. The job scheduling, submission and monitoringprocesses are controlled by a Condor high throughput system.Dr Marc Molinari, Southampton Regional e-Science Centre,School of Engineering Sciences, looks at the increasingdemand for Grid computing…The Intelligent Choice in Computer & Audiovisual Rentals   0845 600 7272At the University of Southampton, a large number of projectsare currently under way making use of local, national andinternational Grid facilities. Aerodynamics and flight mechan-ics, next generation aeroplane design models for noisereduction and fuel efficiency, computational electromagnet-ics, high energy physics, nano-materials, ocean circulationand climate modelling, bio-molecular simulations, humangenetics, general relativity, remote sensing and spatial analy-sis, social statistics, archaeology and quantum chemistry areonly some of the fields from which simulations are run on ourcurrent compute facilities, mostly with funding from theResearch Councils. The DTI has funded a range of projects inthe e-Science programme to encourage the uptake of thetechnology into industry. The range of our industrial partnersreaches from major international companies to local start-upcompanies, including Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Fluent, Epistemics,Compusys, WUMTIA, Lloyds Register and Mesophotonics.Some of our recent projects include those concerned with thedesign of ship shapes, electromagnetic design optimisation ofnext generation photonic devices and the collection of dis-tributed sensor data for civil engineering purposes, as well asenhancing aerospace design optimisation in collaborationwith BAE and Rolls-Royce (see http://www.geodise.org).G-ShipThe G-Ship project looks into how Grid technology can bemade available to ship design engineers via a web portal. Thisallows engineers to compute ship motion in different types ofsea through the use of the capacities the Grid offers.Previously, these models would have taken several days tocompute on conventional systems; the new Grid technology,however, allows this to be performed in the fraction of anhour. The ease of use of this technology through a standardweb page interface has been demonstrated and the portal isnow also actively used to train student engineers in the field.A critical factor of Grid technology is security and authentication.Personal certificates assigned by the national certificationauthority to members of the e-Science community enable apassport-like access to the distributed compute resourcesacross the country. The G-Ship project produced a softwarepackage, which provides high level tools to simplify the devel-opment of Grid Portal access software for software engineers.The package has been made available to the national Gridsoftware repository via the web.GEMAnother project has been concerned with how to combineand use idle company internal compute resources more effi-ciently in the modelling and optimisation of photonic crystaldesigns for use in current and future communication tech-nology and optical devices. This has given the engineers at theinvolved start-up company the possibility of running designsearches overnight from a single desktop computer, whichwould normally have taken most of a week, with lots of inter-action required on many PCs.As part of the GEM project in collaboration with the Geodiseproject, an XML toolbox has been developed, which allows theinteraction of standard commercial engineering softwarewith Grid and web technology based on the open XML stan-dard. Within the first 14 months of availability, over 1,000users from the commercial and educational engineering sec-tor have downloaded this toolbox.In summaryThe successful uptake of the software developed in collabora-tion between the Southampton e-Science Centre andindustrial partners shows that there is an increasing demandfor Grid technology. Developed Grid software is, and will be,available from the central repository of the national OpenMiddleware Infrastructure Institute (http://www.omii.ac.uk).We are delighted to be part of the community working at theforefront of this exciting new technology and to be involvedin the transfer of this technology to industry. Showcases andinvited presentations at international conferences demon-strate that our research in the e-Science field is also highlyrelevant to current and future developments in the interna-tional Grid community.The University of Southampton remains dedicated to devel-oping and enhancing novel Grid and web technologies in thefuture. This has been highlighted by the recent appointmentof the ‘Inventor of the Web’, Sir Berners-Lee, to a chair at theSchool of Electronics and Computer Science. We expect e-Science and Grid computing to change the way people willdeal with science and technology in the future.Information Technology174Dr Marc MolinariSouthampton Regionale-Science CentreSchool of EngineeringSciencesUniversity of SouthamptonSouthampton SO17 1BJTel: 023 8059 5000Fax: 023 8059 7082m.molinari@soton.ac.ukwww.soton.ac.ukwww.e-science.soton.ac.ukThe Intelligent Choice in Computer & Audiovisual Rentals   0845 600 7272

Science and technology for the future

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