[SX SERIES TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHT]
Introduction to the Grid Computing
Toshifumi Takei, Manager, Scientific Software Department, HPC Marketing Promotion Division Eiichi Nakano, Assistant Manager, Scientific Software Department, HPC Marketing Promotion Division
INTRODUCTION
There is an ever-increasing attention to the Grid computing that allows any number of interconnected computing resources to be viewed as a unified system. In such fields as high-energy physics, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, the Grid computing has already been utilized for the effective use of heterogeneous computing resources, as well as seamless access to numerical results and experimental data that are distributed across the network. Also, based on the conventional Internet technology such as security and distributed computing, various researches on Grid-related technologies are promoted in many countries. As basic software for the Grid computing, the Globus Toolkit that has been developed mainly in the United States, as well as UNICORE that has been developed mainly in Europe, is getting pervasive. Moreover, the OGSA (Open Grid Service Architecture) technologies, which incorporate web service technologies being spread in business computing, are attracting lots of attention. is now gaining momentum in many grid-related projects in the world as a de facto standard. While mere installation of this toolkit does not support user-friendly manipulation of commands, like GUI-based job submission, Grid systems can be built by combining various toolkit components. The Globus Toolkit consists of such components as GRAM (Globus Resource Allocation Manager) for computing resource management and process generation, MDS (Monitoring and Discovery Service) for the access to the information on the status of a system, GSI (Grid Security Infrastructure) that offers security services, GASS (Global Access to Secondary Storage) for remote data access, and GridFTP (Grid File Transfer Protocol). Figure 1 shows the configuration of a system based on the Globus Toolkit and the positioning of relating software components. creation/termination of services Setting of lifetime of each service Notification of the change in the status of a service The capabilities of OGSI are being utilized in a broad range of fields including business applications. For example, the development of the OGSA-compliant UNICORE is promoted under the project called GRIP (GRid Interoperability Project). Intensive research is being conducted for the Access Grid 2.0 (AG2.0) that realizes a collaborative environment on the Grid, and Condor, a system to harness the power of less-utilized machine resources on the network. Moreover, standardization has been advanced for OGSA-DAI(OGSA-Data Access and Integration) that is aimed at the implementation of database access functions, thus facilitating the integrated use of heterogeneous bio-databases across organizations.
OGSA
The Globus Toolkit 3.0 (GT3.0) was released in June 2003 and supports OGSA. The OGSA provides enhanced web services, thus allowing the user to gain access to versatile functions of the Globus Toolkit. The OGSI (Open Grid Service Infrastructure), a basic component of OGSA, enables the extension of existing web service functions with the following features: Dynamic resource allocation by dynamic
Application (Solver, Visualization, etc)
NEC’S ACTIVITIES
In addition to the participation in the GGF (Global Grid Forum), an organization for the standardization of Grid technologies, NEC has contributed to the demonstration of Grid technologies. For example, NEC has actively been involved in the development of the Campus Grid at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Bio-Grid at Osaka University by using Globus for NEC’s Blade servers. Also, NEC has been promoting the research and development on application software in such areas as largescale data processing and visualization for Grid environments. Furthermore, C&C Research Laboratories, NEC Europe Ltd. now plays major roles in the GEMSS (Grid-Enabled Medical Simulation Services) project by joining forces with several research organizations in Europe.
GLOBUS TOOLKIT
The Globus Toolkit is a collection of softtem. It has been developed mainly by Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago. The Globus Toolkit
Globus upper tool Resource & security info service Remote job control Resource management Job control Parallel job execution Communication library OS
MPICH-G2
GridRPC
CONDOR-G
Grid System Manager
Globus Toolkit ,OGSA (GRAM,GSI,MDS, GASS,GridFTP) Local Job Scheduler (NQSII, LSF, SCore,SGE, CONDOR) MPI High Speed Communication Library Linux Linux Linux Linux UNIX UNIX UNIX UNIX Local System Manager
Fig.1: Software hierarchy of Globus-based Grid computing
In Japan, the Business Grid Computing Project was initiated in 2003 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. The NAREGI (NAtional REsearch Grid Initiative) project was also launched by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. NEC is committed to contributing to the further development of HPC through these activities.
CONCLUSION
Grid computing is about to open up a new possibility in HPC. In this article, the authors introduced Grid-related technologies, such as the Globus Toolkit. The Grid computing is now evolving with the emergence of new technologies and their standardization. NEC is expecting the advent of a new era when people can gain access to required computing powers and data anytime, anywhere with the integrated Grid technologies.
References Globus http://www.globus.org/ OGSA http://www.globus.org/ogsa/ OGSA-DAI http://www.ogsa-dai.org.uk/ UNICORE http://www.unicore.org/ Condor http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/ Access Grid http://www.accessgrid.org/ GEMSS http://www.ccrl-nece.de/gemss/ NAREGI http://www.naregi.org/index_e.html GGF http://www.ggf.org/ GRIP http://www.grid-interoperability.org/ Contact Scientific Software Department, HPC Marketing Promotion Division 1-10, Nisshin-cho, Fuchu, Tokyo 183-8501 Japan Tel: +81-42-333-6389 Fax: +81-42-333-6382 E-mail: e-nakano@ax.jp.nec.com