From Metacomputing to Grid Computing: Evolution or Revolution?

Abstract

The last decade have seen a considerable increase in computer and network performance, mainly as a result of faster hardware and more sophisticated software. In fact, the need for realistic simulations of complex systems relevant to the modeling of several modern technologies and environmental phenomena increasingly stimulates the development of new advanced computing approaches.

Today it is possible to couple a wide variety of resources including supercomputers, storage systems, data sources, and special classes of devices distributed geographically, and use them as a single unified resource, thus forming what is popularly known as a computational grid. The initial aim of Grid Computing activities was to link supercomputing sites (Metacomputing); current objectives go far beyond this. According to Larry Smarr, NCSA Director, a Grid is a seamless, integrated computational and collaborative environment. Many applications can benefit from the grid infrastructure, including collaborative engineering, data exploration, high throughput computing, and of course distributed supercomputing [1], [2], [3]. Grid applications (multi-disciplinary applications) couple resources that cannot be replicated at a single site even or may be globally located for other practical reasons. These are some of the driving forces behind the inception of grids. In this light, grids let users solve larger or new problems by pooling together resources that could not be coupled easily before.

Hence the Grid is not only a computing paradigm for just providing computational resources for grand-challenge applications. It is an infrastructure that can bond and unify globally remote and diverse resources ranging from meteorological sensors to data vaults, from parallel supercomputers to personal digital organizers.

Currently, there are many grid projects underway worldwide. A very comprehensive listing can be found in [4][5]. Moreover, two important international open forums, Grid (www.gridforum.org), and E-Grid (www.egrid.org) have been created in order to promote and develop Grid Computing technologies and applications. This talk aims to present the stateof- the-art of grid computing and attempts to survey the major international adventures in this area.