Parallel computing and the Grid—experiences and applications

Abstract

In recent years, Grid computing evolved from first implementations as prototype Grid environments to large-scale production Grid infrastructures utilised during everyday work by scientists around the world. This demonstrates that the concept of the Grid is more than merely a marketing phrase, but instead an enabler for new application domains in parallel and distributed computing. Among others, the EU project EGEE (“Enabling Grids for E-Science”) is probably the worlds largest initiative for establishing a permanent Grid infrastructure on a 24 × 7 basis. Such a Grid that is always on and there to serve the community just like the ubiquitous networking infrastructures today is on the horizon, waiting for users to utilise it in their applications. This paper explores the different possibilities for utilising Grids in parallel applications, focusing on different parallel computing aspects as provided by Grid environments. Basic concepts such as using the Grid as a large data storage and management basis or as a collection of distributed supercomputers represent a new approach to computational science, where users are expecting to utilise unprecedented amounts of performance for tackling their scientific problems.

Keywords:

• Parallel computing
• Grid
• Infrastructures
• Environments

Acknowledgements

The work described in this paper has been supported by a series of colleagues from the Joh. Kepler University Linz, the University of Innsbruck, the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the University of Amsterdam. Project funding has been received from the EU Commission through the CrossGrid project (IST-2001-32243), the EGEE project (INFSO-508833), the EGEE-II project (INFSO-RI-031688), and the Austrian Grid project funded by the Austrian bm:bwk, Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture under contract GZ 4003/2-VI/4c/2004.

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