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IU receives grant from National Science Foundation to
help build global grid network
Oct. 22, 2001
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- The National Science Foundation recently awarded a
consortium of 15 universities, including Indiana University, $13.65 million to
build the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory, or iVDGL.
This "Global Grid" of computing networks will harness the computational power
needed to conduct major scientific experiments in physics, astronomy, biology
and engineering in the 21st century.
The iVDGL will consist of a seamless network of thousands of computers at 40
locations in the United States, Europe and Asia. Together, these computers will
work as a powerful grid capable of handling petabytes of data. One petabyte is
roughly the amount of data contained in 100,000 personal computer hard drives.
Software developed by the GriPhyN (Grid Physics Network) project -- a major
NSF computer science-physics consortium funded in 2000 in which IU is also
involved -- will allow grid users to access and process globally distributed
data in a transparent fashion. The iVDGL will be the platform on which these
grid technologies can be evaluated and developed.
IU will make significant contributions to the iVDGL by providing two major
components of the grid computing project: a prototype Tier-2 Data Center for the
ATLAS high energy physics experiment and the International Grid Operations
Center, or iGOC. The project makes use of investments made by IU in several key
areas of information technology, including advanced networking (Internet2
Abilene, TransPAC, and Global Network Operations Center), high performance
computing and massive data storage.
The prototype Tier-2 Center will be a data analysis facility for physicists
using the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, located near Geneva,
Switzerland. Approximately 2,000 ATLAS physicists will seek to understand the
origins of mass and will search for new forms of matter and interactions at the
high energy physics frontier starting in 2006.
The U.S. component of the ATLAS team consists of researchers from 29
universities and three national laboratories. The Tier-2 Center, located on the
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus, will house "farms" of
Linux-based computers, which will process data loaded onto large arrays of hard
disks and the university's high performance tape storage systems.
These computer farms will be connected to others at centers around the world
via the Internet2 Abilene network, and will be used by physicists to simulate
particle collisions in the ATLAS detector in a series of "data challenges"
beginning next year. The ATLAS experiment, which will operate for a decade or
longer, will begin producing data at a rate of roughly 10 petabytes per year.
"We are helping to develop the international computing platform required to
extract physics measurements from the ATLAS experimental data," said Robert
Gardner, assistant professor of physics at IU, who leads the distributed IT
infrastructure effort for the U.S. ATLAS Collaboration and the IU GriPhyN and
iVDGL teams. "The enormous amount of data produced by ATLAS will be distributed
in a hierarchical way to many data centers in Europe, the Americas and Asia.
Grid software will make it easy for physicists to use specific data collections
no matter where the data is physically stored. In addition, results from their
calculations will be accessible to collaborating physicists located throughout
the world.
"The roadblocks we will remove while building the software infrastructure for
an internationally integrated data grid facility will benefit other large-scale
data-intensive sciences at IU such as astronomy, astrophysics, bioinformatics
research and earthquake seismic imaging," Gardner said. "Our applications share
many requirements, the most important being the ability to securely and
efficiently locate, access and process large data volumes distributed over the
network by authorized researchers located anywhere."
The effective operation of this globally distributed grid laboratory requires
certain coordinated support services and management. This support will be
provided through the development of an International Grid Operations Center (iGOC)
to be co-located with IU's Global Network Operations Center (NOC) on the IUPUI
campus.
"The iGOC will support the iVDGL as the Global NOC supports international
research networks, providing a unified and coordinated point of contact for
iVDGL status, configuration and management, as well as overall issues of
robustness," said Brian D. Voss, IU associate vice president for
telecommunications.
A separate but related NSF grant was awarded to IU to develop software to
acquire "telemetry" signals from the grid for operational use by the iGOC. This
three-year program will result in software systems used by the iGOC to monitor
and archive grid status and performance data, and make these data available to
developers and users of the grid. The NSF iVDGL and grid telemetry awards will
provide $2.4 million in funding to IU over the course of the two projects.
About Indiana University
Indiana University is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest and
also one of the largest universities in the United States, with more than
110,000 students, faculty and staff on eight campuses. IU has a growing national
and international reputation in the areas of information technology and advanced
networking. IU was named by Time magazine as 2001 College of the Year
among research institutions and recently acquired the nation's largest
university-owned supercomputer. IU's home on the Web is http://www.indiana.edu.
For more information about the iVDGL project, visit
http://www.ivdgl.org/.
(Christine Fitzpatrick, 317-278-1818, cfitzpat@iupui.edu)