[CAnet - news] Emerging LambdaGrids for eScience - Optiputer, DAS-3, TeraGrid, etc

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 [The world of distributed computing and grids continues to evolve. First we
had parallel computing, then distributed computing, then grids and now
lambda grids.  The Optiputer, TeraGrid and The Netherlands DAS-3 are good
examples of these new types computational facilities where the optical
network is an integral part of the computational infrastructure as opposed
to a piece of plumbing. The DAS-3 for example will have 8 lambdas riding on
top of the SURFnet network interconnected to clusters located around the
Netherlands.  Recently an Optiputer node was established at Communications
Research Center using the new lightpath connection between CENIC and CA*net
4. The following are some excerpts from GridToday -- BSA]

www.gridtoday.com
www.teragrid.org
www.optiputer.net
http://www.gigaport.nl/info/toepassingen/lichtpaden/das.jsp


The OptIPuter: 21st Century E-Science
                The OptIPuter project -- named for its use of optical
networking,   computer storage, processing and visualization technologies --
is a   21st-century prototype cyberinfrastructure that tightly couples 
  computational resources over parallel optical networks using the 
  internet protocol (IP) communication mechanism.
  
  The OptIPuter exploits a new world in which the central architectural 
  element is optical networking, not computers, said project manager 
  Maxine Brown speaking at the first annual TeraGrid conference in 
  Indianapolis.
  
  "The goal of this new architecture is to enable scientists who are 
  generating terabytes and petabytes of data to interactively visualize, 
  analyze and correlate their data from multiple remote storage sites 
  connected to optical networks," said Brown, associate director of the 
  Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at 
  Chicago. 
  
  "However, this time the parallelism is in multiple wavelengths of 
  light, or lambdas, on single optical fibers, creating supernetworks."
  
  Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the 
  University of California at San Diego are leading the OptIPuter 
  project effort under a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) 
  Information Technology Research (ITR) grant, funded for the period 
  October 2002 through September 2007.
  
  According to Brown, the OptIPuter's mission is to enable collaborating 
  scientists to interactively explore massive amounts of previously 
  uncorrelated data. The researchers on the project hope that the 
  OptIPuter, when linked with remote "data generators," whether the 
  TeraGrid, instrumentation or data storage devices, will prove to be an 
  enabling technology for large-scale networked science facilities, as 
  well as for broader societal needs, including emergency response, 
  homeland security, health services and science education.
  
  The OptIPuter project, said Brown, is different from other distributed 
  Grid and high-performance computing projects in that it focuses on 
  optical networking.
  
  "Metro and long-haul 10Gbps optical networks are 100 times faster than 
  100T-base Fast Ethernet local area networks connecting PCs in research 
  laboratories," Brown said. "The exponential growth rate in bandwidth 
  capacity over the past 12 years has surpassed even Moore's Law due, in 
  part, to the use of parallelism in network architectures. Now the 
  parallelism is in multiple wavelengths of light on single-strand 
  optical fibers, creating supernetworks, or networks faster (and 
  someday cheaper) than the computers attached to them."
  
  While extremely important, bandwidth alone is not the solution, Brown 
  continued.
  
  "The OptIPuter is working on new Grid computing paradigms -- new 
  middleware, transport protocols, optical signaling, and control and 
  management software to enable applications to dynamically manage 
  lambda resources just as they do any grid resource, creating a 
  'LambdaGrid' of interconnected high-performance computers, data 
  storage devices and instrumentation."
  
  The OptIPuter project is learning to take advantage of bandwidth and 
  storage to conserve "scarce" computing in today's new world of 
  inverted values. Essentially, the OptIPuter is a virtual parallel 
  computer in which the individual processors are distributed clusters; 
  the memory is large distributed data repositories; peripherals are 
  very-large scientific instruments, visualization displays and/or 
  sensor arrays; and the motherboard uses standard IP delivered over 
  multiple dedicated lambdas that serve as the system bus or backplane.
  
  "CAVEwave" is a dedicated 10-Gigabit deterministic network that is 
  being deployed nationally over the National LambaRail (NLR) for use 
  for OptIPuter experiments. In turn, NLR is connected to an 
  international fabric of optical networks, which are part of the Global 
  Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF). GLIF connects collaborators to 
  their colleagues and to data sources all over the world, providing 
  researchers with guaranteed bandwidth for data movement, guaranteed 
  latency for visualization/collaboration and data analysis, and 
  guaranteed scheduling for remote instrument control.
  
  "The OptIPuter project is not optimizing toward scaling to millions of 
  sites, a requirement for commercial profit, but empowering networking 
  at a much higher level of data volume, accuracy and timeliness for 
  several key high-priority research and education sites."
  
  To learn more about the OptIPuter project, visit 
  <http://www.optiputer.net>.
  

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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.
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