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Powerfu l g loba l comput ing

networks are set to enable

a new, co l lect ive approach

to do ing sc ience. Phys ics

wi l l lead the way

VISIONS11B R I E F I N G P A P E R S F O R

P O L I C Y M A K E R S

E - s c i e n c e

t is extraordinary how muchthe Internet has changed our

lives in just a few years. We nowall talk to each other, find outinformation, shop and bankthrough the informal, globalnetwork of computers, using asystem of software called theWorld Wide Web. Yet the Webwas first purely a physicist’s tool – developed at CERN, the European particle physicslaboratory in Geneva, to allow its research teams based across different countries tocommunicate and share data.

Now, physicists and computerscientists are driving the nextevolutionary stage in Internet

technology, which is to broadenthe capability of computernetworks to provide delocalised,large-scale resources for storing,accessing and processing data,and to make them available togroups of people with commongoals. Computer services willbecome a utility like electricity,supplied via a ‘Grid’ that you cansimply plug into without beingconcerned about their location.

The first beneficiaries will belarge collaborations of scientists

and engineers working onproblems that involve hugeamounts of data. Indeed, one of the first large-scale examplesof the Grid in action will be in high-energy physics. The LargeHadron Collider, being built atCERN to investigate the ultimatephysics of the Universe, willgenerate billions of megabytesof data to be made available for analysis to thousands ofphysicists working in teamsaround the world. Nosupercomputer could managethis amount of data on its own.The LHC Grid will therefore bespread over an internationalnetwork of sites in a four-tiersystem.

Other scientific areas dealingwith deluges of data, will alsobenefit from this distributedcomputing approach. Theseinclude astronomy, Earthobservation, engineering and the biosciences (in particularexploiting the information from

the Human Genomeproject). In fact, the Gridmakes possible a powerful andpervasive research methodology– ‘e-science’.

Idle computers

The idea of distributedcomputing is quite old. Even 20years ago, people realised thatindividual computers could beharnessed like a team of horsesto provide more processingpower. Today, the fastestsupercomputers are collectionsof microprocessors, and manylaboratories string togetherclusters of PCs – each morepowerful than a supercomputerwas 10 years ago – intocomputer ‘farms’.

However, there is no reasonwhy the PCs should be in onelocation or even in one country.This was realised in 1985 byMiron Livny at the University of

T H A N K S G O T O T O N Y H E Y O F S O U T H A M P T O N U N I V E R S I T Y / E P S R C / D T I , A N D A L S O T O G E R R Y

Developing newaircraft will be done by'virtual' organisationssupported by the Grid

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The Grid will play a major role in analysing particle

collisions from theLarge Hadron Collider

Wisconsin, who pointed out thatmost PCs are often idle andproposed pooling their spareprocessing capacity usingInternet software. The first well-known application was for theSETI (search for extraterrestrialintelligence) project. Home-computer users could downloada screen-saver, SETI@home,which sifted through theplethora of radio signals receivedfrom space by the Arecibotelescope in Puerto Rico. Other‘@homes’ soon followedenabling various medicalprojects such as cancer andAIDS research.

This was just the beginning. In 1995 Ian Foster at ArgonneNational Laboratory and CarlKesselman of the University ofSouthern California took theconcept in a new direction. They realised that researchcommunities, which arebecoming increasinglyinternational and multi-disciplinary, could link all theircomputers so as to share data,applications, instruments andother resources in a coordinatedand controlled way to create asingle virtual laboratory. Theconcept of the Grid was born.

Foster envisages that to solveparticular problems, groups ofpeople would come together to form ‘virtual organisations’supported by the Gridinfrastructure. These could beparticle physicists working witha new collider, a companyconsortium designing a new jet,or a crisis-management teamdealing with an environmentalproblem.

Creating a large-scalecomputing infrastructure, ofcourse, requires not only theright hardware – sets ofcomputer clusters and high-speed connections – but alsostandard protocols and services

to knit the system together –‘middleware’. The system has to be secure and interfaceflexibly with different operatingplatforms. It has to recognisewho is allowed access, whatkinds of programs or data arebeing requested and how toallocate the computer resources.A set of Grid technologies isslowly emerging, the first beingprovided by the Globus Toolkitdeveloped by teams headed byFoster and Kesselman. However,other research groups are also working on providingmiddleware components.

Grids ‘R’ Us

Scientists, especially physicists,have been quick to recognisethe potential of this new way ofworking. Grid projects abound.For example, in the US there is the Grid Physics Network(GriPhyN), the NASA InformationPower Grid, the Department ofEnergy Science Grid, the ParticlePhysics Data Grid and theNational Science Foundation’sTera Grid, among others.Europeans have been equallyactive and are working on arange of initiatives including theCERN DataGrid, an EU-fundedEurogrid and the VirtualObservatory (see Box).

The UK Government has also recognised the potential of e-science, allocating £120Mover 3 years for various Gridapplications in all areas ofscience and engineering, forupgrading hardware and fordeveloping generic middleware.Theoretical physicist andcomputer scientist, Tony Hey,leads the initiative. A nationalnetwork of Grid centres is beingset up. Many of the projects willinvolve collaboration withindustry as well as interfacingwith international Grid projects.IT companies such as IBM,

Microsoft and Sun are alsogearing up to participate increating the infrastructure.

The ultimate aim will beeventually to provide anintelligent global computing and data resource, that, like the present Internet, can beexploited by science, commerceand individuals according to their needs.

G I L M O R E O F T H E C A M B R I D G E I N S T I T U T E O F A S T R O N O M Y F O R T H E I R H E L P W I T H T H I S P A P E R

T H E V I R T U A L O B S E R VAT O R Y

Astronomy offers an ideal testbed for

e-science. Astronomers realised that ongoing

and new sky surveys cataloguing stars and

galaxies at all wavelengths were creating vast

data sets. The idea of a Virtual Observatory

has emerged as a way of coordinating the

data from the different archives so they could

be easily accessed. This approach will change

the way astronomers work. They will be able

to explore a wide range of observations,

across wavelengths for example, in a way that

will lead to new astrophysical insights.

Furthermore, researchers in developing

countries, and students, will benefit as they

are given direct access to resources

otherwise unavailable to them. The

sociological impact of the Grid approach to

doing science will be enormous.

The VISTA telescopesurveys will

generate largeamounts of data

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Visions is a ser ies of papers which

highl ight exci t ing new areas of research

in physics, and their theoret ical and

technological impl icat ions.

AV A I L A B L E V I S I O N PA P E R S :

H i g h i n t e n s i t y l a s e r sQ u a n t u m i n f o r m a t i o nE x o t i c n u c l e a r b e a m sP h y s i c s a n d f i n a n c eS p i n t r o n i c sT h e L a r g e H a d r o n C o l l i d e rPa r t i c l e a c c e l e r a t o r s – t h e n e x t f r o n t i e rF l a t s c r e e n d i s p l a y sS u p e r c o n d u c t i v i t yG r a v i t y w a v e s

F O R T H C O M I N G V I S I O N PA P E R S :

P h o t o n i c sT e l e s c o p e sT e c h n o l o g i c a l p l a s m a sF r e e e l e c t r o n l a s e r s

A B O U T T H E I N S T I T U T E O F P H Y S I C S

The Inst i tute of Physics is an internat ional

learned society and professional body for

physic ists . The Inst i tute has more than 37,0 0 0

individual members.

F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M AT I O N C O N TA C T :

Department of Higher Educat ion and Research

The Inst i tute of Physics

76 Port land Place, London W1B 1NT, UK

e-mai l : v is ions@iop.org

Inst i tute website: http: / /www.iop.org/

To f ind out more about Grid projects and

technologies, start off at the Nat ional e-Science

Centre which has l inks to a range of s i tes:

www.nesc.ac.uk/ggrid/ index.html

For more on virtual observator ies start at

The Virtual Observatory Forum:

www.voforum.org/

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