Grid Computing

Distributed Computing Zoo

• Grid Computing• Also called High-Performance Computing• Big clusters, Big data, Big pipes, Big centers• Globus backbone, which now includes Services and Gateways• Decentralized control

• Cluster Computing• local interconnect between identical cpu’s

• Peer-to-Peer (Napster, Kazaa)• Systems for sharing data without centeral server

• Internet Computing• Screensaver cycle scavenging• eg SETI@home, Einstein@home, ClimatePrediction.net, etc

• Access Grid• A videoconferencing system

• Globus• A popular software package to federate resources into a grid

• TeraGrid• A $150M award from NSF to the Supercomputer centers (NCSA, SCSC, PSC, etc etc)

• The World Wide Web provides seamless access to information that is stored in many millions of different geographical locations

• In contrast, the Grid is an emerging infrastructure that provides seamless access to computing power and data storage capacity distributed over the globe.

What is the Grid?

• “Grid” was coined by Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman “The Grid: blueprint for a new computing infrastructure”.

• Analogy with the electric power grid: plug-in to computing power without worrying where it comes from, like a toaster.

• The idea has been around under other names for a while (distributed computing, metacomputing, …).

• Technology is in place to realise the dream on a global scale.

What is the Grid?

•DOE Science Grid•NSF National Virtual Observatory•NSF GriPhyN/iVDGL•DOE Particle Physics Data Grid•NSF TeraGrid•DOE Earth Systems Grid•NEESGrid•DOH BIRN

•UK e-Science Grid•EUROGRID

•DataGrid (CERN, ...)•EuroGrid (Unicore)•DataTag (CERN,…)•GridLab (Cactus Toolkit)•CrossGrid (Infrastructure Components)

Grid projects in the world