Transcript Presentation For Malaysian Delegation

National University of Sciences & Technology
Grid Research in Pakistan
Before Grids
Researchers in many
locations need to share
resources
FTP, telnet…. blood, sweat and
tears and little support for
collaboration
There must be a better way of doing this!!!
Scientific instruments, data
stores and computers in
many locations
MIDDLEWARE
Middleware
Mobile Access
Supercomputer, PC-Cluster
Workstation
Data-storage, Sensors, Experiments
Visualising
Internet, networks
With Grids
Researchers in many
locations need to share
resources
Resources connect to “The
Grid”
Scientific instruments, data
stores and computers in
many locations
Slide derived from EDG / LCG tutorials
Motivations for Grid Computing
Improve
Efficiency
Reduce Provide
Increase
Costs Reliability
Capacity
& Availability
Support
Reduce
Heterogeneous
Time to
Systems
Results
Enable
Collaboration
Challenges for Research and Industry
• Sensitive data, sensitive applications (medical patient
records)
• Different organizations get different benefits
• Accounting, who pays for what (sharing!)
• Security policies: consistent and enforced across the grid !
• Lack of standards prevent interoperability of components
• Current IT culture is not predisposed to sharing resources
• Not all applications are grid-ready or grid-enabled
• Open source is not equal open source (read the small print)
• SLAs based on open source (liability?)
• “Static” licensing model don’t embrace grid
• Protection of intellectual property
• Legal issues (e.g. FDA, HIPAA, multi-country grids)
Challenges for Research and Industry
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Sensitive data, sensitive applications (medical patient records)
Different organizations get different benefits
Accounting, who pays for what (sharing!)
Security policies: consistent and enforced across the grid !
Lack of standards prevent interoperability of components
Current IT culture is not predisposed to sharing resources
Not all applications are grid-ready or grid-enabled
Open source is not equal open source (read the small print)
SLAs based on open source (liability?)
“Static” licensing model don’t embrace grid
Protection of intellectual property
Legal issues (e.g. FDA, HIPAA, multi-country grids)
Establishment of Grid Node at NIIT
• Established under the umbrella of “Center
for High Performance Scientific Computing”
at NIIT
• Aims include:
– Run a production Grid node
– Support science and engineering
– Conduct research, development, and evaluation
of parallel programming languages, libraries,
and paradigms
– Produce experts in this area
• Web: http://hpc.niit.edu.pk
Monitoring the NIIT HPC Grid
MPJ Express
• MPJ Express is a software that enables
writing parallel applications on the Grid
• First released in September 2005 under
LGPL (an open-source licence):
– Approximately 1000 users all around the world
• The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory
• Lawrence Livermore National Lab
• University Malaysia Sabah: Prog Hog
• On going collaboration with University of
Reading, UK
• Website: http://mpj-express.org
James Gosling (Founder of Java)
Says…
Cosmological Simulations
• We have produced a Java version of Gadget-2, a
massively parallel structure formation code
• The code has been used in “The Millennium
Simulation”:
–Considered as “the” largest ever model of the Universe
–Follows the evolution of ten billion “dark matter”
particles
–The simulation ran on a supercomputer for almost a
month
Blue Brain Project
• Launched by Brain Mind Institute,
EPFL and IBM corporation to make
computer models of information
processing capabilities of the brain
based on the work of 1981 Nobel Prize
in Medicine.
• Uses 8th fastest computer in the world
(source www.top500.org International
Supercomputing Organisation)
• Landmark project for Biology,
Medicine, Mathematics and Computer
Science
• Numerous areas for collaboration for
various institutes at NUST
NUST-EPFL Collaboration
• Four Students working (worked) at EPFL – all
funded by EPFL
• Two students working at NIIT. One of them
scheduled to visit EPFL for 6 months in Nov
06 – funded by NUST
• Graduate student intake for the future
collaboration - Under Progress
• Prof Henry Markram is scheduled to visit
NUST for further strengthening of this
research Initiative
Malaysian Collaboration
• Dr Wahab Minister Jamalidin Jarjis
• Senior Faculty from Multimedia University
and members of Multi Media Super
Corridor Visited EPFL
• Establishment of Blue Brain Node in
Malaysia
• Project comparable to Human Genome
scale
Recent Developments at NIIT
• Two faculty members placed in
Industry
• IT student intake enhanced to 200
• Four Industry projects in progress
• Two NIIT faculty members
proceeding to USA for summer
teaching
Recent Developments at NIIT
• Two Japanese Professors joined NIIT
for two years teaching and research
• 13 Research papers published during
past six months
• One indigenous product Developed
-- looking for venture capital?
• Another indigenous product will be
ready by end Aug 07
INDUSTRY SPONSORED LABS
AT NIIT
• NCR established Dataware housing and
Data mining lab at NIIT
• IBM Open Source Resource Center --Hardware including E-server, Web Sphere
Server, Lotus Exchange Server Donated
• INTEL
established a state-of-the-art
computer lab at NIIT
• IBM established 1 Mil USD funded Open
Source Resource center
CONCLUSION
• Coming together is a beginning
• Keeping together is a progress
• Working together is a success
Thank You