[CAnet - news] Supernets for global research to shine at iGrid

For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net 4 Optical
Internet program web site at http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/library/list.html
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[There will be a significant number of Canadian and UCLP demos at this
event. As well Herve Guy will be giving a tutorial on UCLP.  I agree with
Larry Smarr that iGrid will be a pivotal event in networking and computing
history. Many of the technologies that will be demonstrated such as
OptiPuter, LOOKING, UCLP, GLORIAD etc will be a precursor to the next
generation Internet as outlined recently in the NSF announcement.  Some
excerpts from the EE Times article.  Thanks to Maxine Brown for the pointer
-- BSA}

For information on iGrid2005 see www.iGrid2005.org

 http://www.commsdesign.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170101262 

Supernets for global research to shine at iGrid

The global alliance seeking to build 10-Gbit optical networks and
applications to run on them will meet next month to showcase experiments
built on high-tech input from 21 nations.

Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and
Information Technology, or CalIt2, called the iGrid meeting a pivotal moment
in the world of scientific computing. CalIt2 (San Diego) will host the
meeting, Sept. 26-30.

More than 40 global-computing demos scheduled for the meeting cover an array
of application types, including scientific, the arts and virtual reality.

"We are supporting about 100 Gbits/second of data into the building," Smarr
said. "You are going to see for the first time just how many different
applications are enabled by this new infrastructure."

This year's iGrid program lists projects addressing art, bioinformatics,
chemistry, cosmology, cultural heritage, education, manufacturing, medicine,
geoscience, neuroscience and physics. The meeting is also posing three
grand-challenge problems to advance the global lambda grid.

- Build a terabit local-area network as a test bed for terabit global
networks;

- Develop secure streaming media for superhigh-definition digital cinema, a
video technology with four times the resolution of HDTV; and

- Experiment with high-definition video for virtual reality systems. The
conference will have a large-format tiled display and a six-wall "cave" for
the experiments.

This type of networking and computing is supported by a rapidly developing
optical-network technology that fundamentally differs from the current
Internet. Instead of the best-effort data transfer of the randomly shared
Internet, which can be slow and unpredictable, the international lambda grid
allows direct end-to-end connections at extremely high data rates. That not
only requires long-haul optical backbones across continents, but also the
creation of fiber-optic links directly to computing centers.

What the iGrid participants bring to grid computing is a high-data-rate
optical network. Smarr's CalIt2 facility is developing a general
optical-computing architecture based on the Internet Protocol. Called the
OptIputer, the architectural specification includes everything from the
underlying dense wavelength-division multiplexed optical network through
levels of grid middleware to the actual supercomputer clusters that have
end-to-end connectivity. 

Smarr sees the emerging supernetwork as a pivotal event in the history of
computing. "This is a once-in-20-year kind of transition and it's a
worldwide phenomenon," he said. "Indeed, the United States is a laggard-late
to the party. For example, Canada has had the Canary optical network in
place for over five years and our country got organized with the National
Lambda rail just last fall.



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