Introduction to Grid Activities in the Asia Pacific Region

1
Introduction to Grid Activities in the Asia
Pacific Region

• jointly presented by
• Yoshio Tanaka (AIST)
• Peter Arzberger (UCSD)

2
Outline

• What Grid make it possible?
• Attractive applications
• Introduction of Grid
• Definition
• Grid RD
• Activities in the Asia Pacific Region
• Some thoughts on Grid and P2P
• Possible interaction

3
What Grid makes it possible?

• Online Access to Remote Instruments
• Petabyte-scale Data Analysis

4
What Grid makes it possible? (contd)

• Large-scale Distributed Computing
• Large-scale Metacomputing

5
What Grid makes it possible? (contd)

• High Throughput Computing
• Integration of Human Resources

6
The Grid Problem (definition)

• Flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing
  among dynamic collections of individuals,
  institutions, and resources
• From The Anatomy of the Grid Enabling Scalable
  Virtual Organizations

7
Elements of the Problem

• Resource sharing
• Computers, storage, sensors, networks,
• Sharing always conditional issues of trust,
  policy, negotiation, payment,
• Coordinated problem solving
• Beyond client-server distributed data analysis,
  computation, collaboration,
• Dynamic, multi-institutional virtual orgs
• Community overlays on classic org structures
• Large or small, static or dynamic

8
Research and Development on Grids

• Building Infrastructure (testbed)
• Deploy Grid-enabled resources (clusters)
• Connect with each other
• Make agreements on sociological issues
• security
• accounting
• etc.
• Software Development
• low-leve middleware
• Globus Toolkit
• high-level middleware
• MPICH-G2, Ninf-G2, Nimrod-G,
• applications
• portals / workflow
• Standardization
• Global Grid Forum

9
ApGrid Asia Pacific Partnership for Grid
Computing
North America
Europe

• International Collaboration
• Standardization

Asia
ApGrid Testbed International Grid Testbed over
the Asia Pacific countries

• ApGrid focuses on
• Sharing resources, knowledge, technologies
• Developing Grid technologies
• Helping the use of our technologies in create new
  applications
• Collaboration on each others work

• Possible Applications on the Grid
• Bio Informatics
• (Rice Genome, etc.)
• Earth Science
• (Weather forecast, Fluid prediction, Earthquake
  prediction, etc.)

10
PRAGMA Pacific Rim Application andGrid
Middleware Assembly
http//www.pragma-grid.net
11
ApGrid/PRAGMA Testbed

• Architecture, technology
• Based on GT2
• Allow multiple CAs
• Build MDS Tree
• Grid middleware/tools from Asia Pacific
• Ninf-G (GridRPC programming)
• Nimrod-G (parametric modeling system)
• SCMSWeb (resource monitoring)
• Grid Data Farm (Grid File System), etc.
• Status
• 26 organizations (10 countries)
• 27 clusters (889 CPUs)

12
Users, Applications and Experiences

• Users
• Participants of both/either ApGrid and/or PRAGMA
• Applications
• Scientific Computing
• Quantum Chemistry, Molecular Energy Calculations,
  Astronomy, Climate Simulation, Molecular Biology,
  Structural Biology, Ecology and Environment, SARS
  Grid, Neuroscience, Tele Science,
• Experiences
• Successful resource sharing between more than 10
  sites in the application level.
• Lessons Learned
• We have to pay much efforts for initiation
• Installation of GT2/JobManager, CA, firewall,
  etc.
• Difficulties caused by the bottom-up approach
• Resources are not dedicated
• Incompatibility between different version of
  software
• Performance problems
• MDS, etc.
• Instability of resources
• Key issue is sociological rather than technical

13
Success Stories

• Climate Simulation using Ninf-G
• Short- to Middle-term Global climate simulation
• Run on more than 800cpus
• Joint demo with TeraGrid
• MD/QM by Nimrod-G
• New opportunities for Hybrid QM-Classical
  Methods

14
Success Stories (contd)

• Trans-Pacific Grid Datafarm won Distributed
  Infrastructure Award in the BWC03
• 7 sites at the US and Japan
• Aggregated BW 3.8Gbps
• Multi-Continental Telescience ownApplication
  Award in the BWC03
• telescience, microscopy, biomedical informatics,
  optical networking, next-generation protocols
• SARS Grid
• Grid Community Pulls together to Battle
  SARS
• Others
• Encyclopedia of Life, Eco Grid, etc.

15
Grid versus P2P

• Basic concept is very similar
• resource sharing
• differences in technologies
• Grid
• comes from HPC
• resources
• supercomputers, clusters, special devices,
  large-scale databases, etc.
• security and performance are key issues
• assumes organization-level agreement for resource
  sharing
• PKI X.509 certificates based authentication
• programming middleware for HPC
• MPI, RPC, etc.
• P2P
• resources
• personal computers, digital contents, etc.
• de-centralized control of resources
• anonymous access is allowed
• scalability is the major advantage

16
From applications perspective

• Elements and requirements
• computation
• easy to develop applications
• easy to run applications
• easy to monitor the status of running
  applications
• high performance
• can expect that execution will be completed
  within (estimated) limited time
• data access
• easy to access
• achieve throughput as high as possible
• both computation and data accesses should be
  secure

17
Interests in P2P from Grid/applications
perspective

• Volunteer computing like SETI_at_HOME is one of
  success stories.
• But we feel interests in data access rather
  than computation.
• Building data-grid using P2P technologies would
  be the most attractive and practical approach as
  integration of P2P and Grid.
• data/contents are automatically distributed in
  Grids and build networks of data/contents.
• Users can access to the nearest data.
• Building contents-level Grid by integration of
  P2P technologies.

18
Interests in P2P from Grid/applications
perspective (contd)

• Sensor Networks could be good testbed for P2P
  theories and protocols
• But sensor networks just extend information
  superhighway (and grid) to the dirt road
• Local computation then communication can be more
  efficient than all point communication
• Sensor-nets have to deal with constraint of
  energy / power

19
Summary

• Grid and P2P can / should co-exist
• Applications should drive use
• APANs role
• Foster development of testbeds
• Provide capability (for large data) and capacity
  (for many connections with sensor nets)
• Engage applications