Acronym: GridLab
Title: A Grid Application Toolkit and Testbed
Period: 1 January 2002 – 31 December 2004
Grant agreement no: IST-2001-32133
GridLab (Grid Application Toolkit and Testbed) is a combined research and development project to develop an innovative and flexible grid application toolkit, which will provide core, easy to use functionality through a carefully constructed set of generic APIs for both simulation codes and Grid software. This toolkit will contain independent modules for handling many different aspects of Grid programming. Grid-enabled applications will be tested on real testbeds constructed by linking a heterogeneous collection of supercomputers and other resources spanning Europe and the US. The primary testbed environment for the project was created last year by the Applications Working Group of the European Grid Forum for demonstrations at SC2000.
Objectives:
Two important aspects of Grid Computing technology development which have been largely ignored, but which we plan to address, form the basis of this proposal: co-development of infrastructure and applications and dynamic grid computing. We will include these elements in developing innovative, yet practical, Grid computing technologies, which will then be immediately and easily adopted and exploited by applications from many different research and engineering fields.
Specific key objectives of our proposal are:
(i) design and develop a Grid Application Toolkit (GAT),
(ii) simultaneously enhance real applications for the Grid,
(iii) test Grid-enabled applications on real testbeds spanning Europe.
Work description:
We propose a balanced program with co-development of a range of Grid applications alongside infrastructure development, working on transatlantic testbeds of varied supercomputers and clusters. This practical approach ensures that the developed software truly enables easy and efficient use of Grid resources in a real user environment, tested by several closely related user communities. We will maintain and upgrade the EU testbeds through deployment of new infrastructure and application technologies as they are developed. All deliverables are immediately prototyped and field-tested under realistic conditions by existing application communities, on large-scale applications, throughout the project. We will develop core capabilities for simulation and visualization codes to be self aware of the changing Grid environment, and to be able to fully exploit dynamic resources for fundamentally new and innovative applications scenarios. The applications themselves will possess the capability to migrate from site to site during the execution, both in whole or in part, to spawn related tasks, and to acquire additional resources as needed, according to both the changing availabilities of various resources in the grid, and the needs of the applications themselves. We will design and develop a Grid Application Toolkit (GAT) to provide core, easy to use functionality through a carefully constructed set of generic APIs for both simulation codes and Grid software. This toolkit will contain independent modules for handling many different aspects of Grid programming, including simulation, performance and grid monitoring, resource brokering and selecting, simulation, performance prediction, interacting with information servers, security, notification, collaborative working, data handling, remote visualization, and remote application steering. We will also enhance real applications for the Grid, implementing new dynamic simulations with the GAT.