An
Overview of the Hungarian Grid Projects
Péter
Kacsuk
MTA
SZTAKI
kacsuk@sztaki.hu
www.lpds.sztaki.hu
Since
September 2000, six Grid projects have run or have been running in Hungary. All
these projects were strongly interconnected and fertilised each other. The
current talk will overview the aims and achievements of these projects and
finally outlines the future of the Hungarian Grid systems based on this
overview.
a. VISSZKI project
In
the framework of the VISSZKI project we studied the Globus middleware and the
Condor resource management system, which are considered as de facto standards
in Grid computing. We evaluated these systems and investigated how they can be
used in the construction of the Hungarian Grid system. The main target platform
was a cluster of heterogeneous clusters and hence the results of this project
significantly influenced the ClusterGrid and DemoGrid projects. The ClusterGrid
project uses the Condor experiences while the DemoGrid project is built on top
of the Globus experiments.
b. DemoGrid project
The
DemoGrid project was focusing on the demonstration of the usage of Grid
technology by four different application areas (human brain research,
astrophysics, aerodynamics, and particle physics) that require the
implementation of different kinds of algorithm classes in the Grid. Besides the
applications, the project investigated some components of Grid middleware, like
storage subsystem, Grid monitoring and Grid security. There was also a strong
infrastructure building aspect of the project. ELTE and RMKI planned to build
large PC-cluster and disk system for Grid usage.
c. SuperGrid project
Though the SuperGrid project
is financed by the OM as an IKTA project, its main goal is to extend the
supercomputing program of the Technical Board towards the Grid. The project
aims at integrating the Hungarian supercomputers and large capacity clusters
into a supercomputing Grid infrastructure and elaborating those software tools
(Grid portal, accounting system, security system, high-level Grid program
development environment) by which such an infrastructure can be easily used by
the Hungarian academic community. A special application modelling the lifetime
of the reactor of the Hungarian nuclear power station at Paks is employed to
test and verify the new supercomputing Grid infrastructure.
d. ClusterGrid project
This project was initiated
by NIIFI in association with the PC-laboratory tender of OM opened for
Hungarian higher educational institutions. The aim of the project is to connect
the PCs of the newly established 99 PC-laboratories (each containing 20 PCs and
one server machine) into a high-performance and high-throughput Grid
infrastructure that serves the research staff and students of the Hungarian
higher educational institutions during the nights (from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m.) and
weekends. The current prototype of the ClusterGrid is a homogeneous Grid
system, which can be considered rather as a supercluster than a real
heterogeneous Grid system. Nevertheless, its size (more than 2000 PCs) and the
applied unique implementation approach make this system a significant Grid
experiment all over Europe.
e. JiniGrid project
A Jini based Grid system is
under investigation by a research group led by Zoltán Juhász at the University
of Veszprém. The main concept of the project is to extend Jini with a Grid
broker that can be used over the Internet. The extended Jini system was tested
on a small experimental Grid system consisting of the computers of the
University of Veszprém and SZTAKI. Based on the encouraging results obtained so
far the University of Veszprém, SZTAKI, ELTE and Sun Microsystems Hungary Ltd.
started a joint IKTA-5 project in January 2003. The goals of this project are
to elaborate the detailed Jini based Grid system and to investigate its
possible integration with the Web Services technology.
f.
ChemistryGrid project
MTA
SZTAKI developed a Grid system (called TotalGrid) by which the heterogeneous
computing resources of an institution can be organised together and allocated
on demand. The upper layers of TotalGrid (P-GRADE, PERL-GRID, GRM) are the
research results of SZTAKI, and the lower layers are standard ones (Condor,
PVM) accessible by anybody. The work of TotalGrid was demonstrated by SZTAKI
and OMSZ by executing the MEANDER ultra-short weather forecast program package
of OMSZ in a small Grid system. Based on these results SZTAKI, OMSZ, MTA KK and
ELTE initiated a new IKTA-5 project in January 2003 with the aim of creating a
specialised chemistry-Grid system and to apply this Grid for modelling various
smog alarm strategies. This task will demonstrate the usability of Grid
technology for collaborative research, as well.