[CAnet - news] Cyber-infrastructure and grids for Architecture Collaborative Design

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
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[Cyber-infrastructure and grids are often associated with academic high
performance computing, but their real potential and significant impact will
be in many other fields and disciplines unrelated to high performance
computing. A quintessential example is the Eucalyptus project - which is a
collaborative cyber-infrastructure project between Carleton University
School of Architecture, Carleton University Systems Engineering Department,
National Research Council (NRC), Communication Research Center (CRC), IBM
and a small company called Pleora that makes little hand held encoders to
transmit HDTV and SDI over lightpaths with IP multicast.  This
multi-disciplinary group has created a powerful set of architectural
collaborative design tools using web services and web services work flow
(BPEL).  From a simple "dash board" on their respective computers,
architectural collaborators across North America can link together rendering
machines, spare computational resources, grids (Maya CUBE), collaborative
HDTV video sessions, and network  elements (using UCLP) to create complex
multidomain network workflows and topologies called APNs (Articulated
Private Networks).  

APNs are next generations VPNs that allow users to integrate a seamless mesh
of VPNS (layer 0- 3), service and applications. They can then manipulate
their interconnection and topology to create "network workflows" linking
together various facilities and applications across multi-domain networks.

Last week the Eucalyptus team gave a demo at Sc06.  What was very impressive
about their cyber-infrastructure architecture was the ability to simply and
quickly link in new web services and workflows over thousands of kilometers.
For example at the demo the team demonstrated how they could link in a fire
emergency model from the Systems Engineering department which allowed the
collaborative architectural team to validate fire safety and emergency
response scenarios within their design.  They also demonstrated how they
could quickly manipulate designs, acquire computational resources for
rendering and share the results through high quality HDTV video conferencing
and shared workspaces.

The NRC-IIT team did an amazing job in developing the various web services
tools and workflows.  The CRC team integrated these with UCLP to provide the
collaborators with control over the network resources to create their APNs.
Overall a very impressive collaboration. And the architect students at
Carleton were amazing at how easily they could manipulate and adapt to these
tools.

For more information please check out the Eucalyptus web site:
http://www.cims.carleton.ca/60.html

For the hand held HTDV video encoders see:
www.pleora.com

For more information on APNs and "network workflows" see:
www.uclp.ca

For more information on using web services and workflow to integrate fire &
emergency response models please see
http://www.sce.carleton.ca/faculty/wainer.html

Bill




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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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