November 20, 2006
http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/1090446.html
The Open Grid Forum (OGF) announced its
interoperability demonstration at the Supercomputing 2006 (SC06)
conference showing the work being done towards interoperable high
performance computing (HPC). Organizations participating in the
demonstration include Altair Engineering, CROWN, EGEE, Fujitsu Labs of
Europe, Genesis II, Globus Alliance, HP, Microsoft, OMII-UK, Platform
Computing, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and University of Virginia.
These participants are exhibiting their prototype implementations of
OGF standards and draft specifications used to enable heterogeneous
integration of HPC Grid solutions.
The demonstration involves compute clusters processing various HPC
applications submitted via OGF's Open Grid Services Architecture
(OGSATM) HPC Profile draft specification, which leverages common Web
Services specifications and existing OGF standards. The use of widely
adopted Web Services and OGF specifications enables the interoperable
interaction between different HPC middleware platforms.
"Interoperability is critical to harnessing the capabilities of
distributed HPC clusters and grids to enable scientific discovery and
business advantage for organizations of all sizes," said Mark Linesch,
president of the OGF. "This demonstration illustrates the progress
being made by OGF and our members to produce standards that enable
interoperability and accelerate adoption."
Comments by leading commercial organizations involved in the
demonstration express the importance of standards and interoperability
to the HPC community:
"Microsoft is making long-term investments in products and solutions
to support the HPC community, as demonstrated by the recent launch of
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and related partner solutions,"
said Kyril Faenov, general manager of HPC at Microsoft Corp. "Microsoft
offers an ideal platform for affordably and effortlessly meeting an
organization's HPC needs, from custom application development to the
compute and data services, which enables researchers and engineers to
spend more time on science instead of IT. Recognizing the need to also
interoperate with existing HPC infrastructure, Microsoft has taken the
lead in architecting HPC specifications, like the OGF's HPC Basic
Profile, in the same way it has been leading the Web Services
interoperability standards."
"More and more Platform customers want to increase Grid adoption
across silo'd Grid deployments with an eye towards enterprise level
grids. Industry standards are critical to these enterprise deployments
as most will include software products from more than just a single
vendor," said Chris Purpura, vice president of new ventures and
strategic alliances, Platform Computing. "Platform products, such as
Platform EGO and Platform Open Cluster Stack have been designed with
the ease of deployment and interoperability in mind and support for
standards demonstrates our belief in putting the customer first."
"The work of organizations using the HPC Profile specifications
demonstrates both the progress of Grid standards and the reality of
interoperability," said Cheryl Doninger, research and development
director at SAS, the leader in business intelligence. "SAS is a
long-time supporter of OGF and the adoption of Grid standards. We
remain committed to working with our partners and fellow technology
leaders to support our customers' Grid computing efforts and to
integrate Grid technologies with SAS' analytical enterprise
applications."
"HP is pleased to participate in the Open Grid Forum's
interoperability demonstration at SC06," said Winston Prather, vice
president for High Performance Computing at HP. "In this demo HP
clusters running Platform LSF, PBS Professional, and Windows Compute
Cluster Server interoperate with systems from some of the world's
leading research institutions. This demo highlights the value of OGF
standards in deploying multi-site, multi-vendor grids for HPC
customers."
At the conference, OGF demonstrations took place with the following
partners:
- Argonne National Lab/Globus Alliance
- EGEE
- HP
- Microsoft (including partner demonstrations by Tokyo Institute of
Technology and University of Virginia)
- Platform Computing
- UK eScience/OMII-UK (including partner demonstrations by Genesis II
and CROWN)
