National University of Sciences & Technology

Grid Research in Pakistan

Researchers in many locations need to share resources

Scientific instruments, data stores and computers in many locations

Before Grids

FTP, telnet…. blood, sweat and tears and little support for

collaboration

There must be a better way of doing this!!!

Middleware

Workstation

Mobile Access

Data-storage, Sensors, Experiments

Internet, networks

Supercomputer, PC-Cluster

VisualisingM

IDD

LEW

AR

E

Resources connect to “The Grid”

Researchers in many locations need to share resources

Scientific instruments, data stores and computers in many locations

With Grids

Slide derived from EDG / LCG tutorials

Motivations for Grid Computing

SupportHeterogeneou

s SystemsEnable

Collaboration

ReduceTime toResults

IncreaseCapacity

ImproveEfficiencyReduceCosts

ProvideReliability

& Availability

• Sensitive data, sensitive applications (medical patient records)

• Different organizations get different benefits

• Accounting, who pays for what (sharing!)

• Security policies: consistent and enforced across the grid !

• Lack of standards prevent interoperability of components

• Current IT culture is not predisposed to sharing resources

• Not all applications are grid-ready or grid-enabled

• Open source is not equal open source (read the small print)

• SLAs based on open source (liability?)

• “Static” licensing model don’t embrace grid

• Protection of intellectual property

• Legal issues (e.g. FDA, HIPAA, multi-country grids)

Challenges for Research and Industry

• Sensitive data, sensitive applications (medical patient records)

• Different organizations get different benefits

• Accounting, who pays for what (sharing!)

• Security policies: consistent and enforced across the grid !

• Lack of standards prevent interoperability of components

• Current IT culture is not predisposed to sharing resources

• Not all applications are grid-ready or grid-enabled

• Open source is not equal open source (read the small print)

• SLAs based on open source (liability?)

• “Static” licensing model don’t embrace grid

• Protection of intellectual property

• Legal issues (e.g. FDA, HIPAA, multi-country grids)

Challenges for Research and Industry

Establishment of Grid Node at NIIT

• Established under the umbrella of “Center for High Performance Scientific Computing” at NIIT

• Aims include: – Run a production Grid node– Support science and engineering– Conduct research, development, and evaluation

of parallel programming languages, libraries, and paradigms

– Produce experts in this area

• Web: http://hpc.niit.edu.pk

Monitoring the NIIT HPC Grid

MPJ Express• MPJ Express is a software that enables

writing parallel applications on the Grid• First released in September 2005 under

LGPL (an open-source licence):– Approximately 1000 users all around the world

• The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

• Lawrence Livermore National Lab

• University Malaysia Sabah: Prog Hog• On going collaboration with University of

Reading, UK• Website: http://mpj-express.org

James Gosling (Founder of Java) Says…

Cosmological Simulations• We have produced a Java version of Gadget-2, a massively parallel structure formation code

• The code has been used in “The Millennium Simulation”:

–Considered as “the” largest ever model of the Universe–Follows the evolution of ten billion “dark matter” particles–The simulation ran on a supercomputer for almost a month

Blue Brain Project

• Launched by Brain Mind Institute, EPFL and IBM corporation to make computer models of information processing capabilities of the brain based on the work of 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

• Uses 8th fastest computer in the world (source www.top500.org International Supercomputing Organisation)

• Landmark project for Biology, Medicine, Mathematics and Computer Science

• Numerous areas for collaboration for various institutes at NUST

NUST-EPFL Collaboration

• Four Students working (worked) at EPFL – all funded by EPFL

• Two students working at NIIT. One of them scheduled to visit EPFL for 6 months in Nov 06 – funded by NUST

• Graduate student intake for the future collaboration - Under Progress

• Prof Henry Markram is scheduled to visit NUST for further strengthening of this research Initiative

Malaysian Collaboration

• Dr Wahab Minister Jamalidin Jarjis

• Senior Faculty from Multimedia University and members of Multi Media Super Corridor Visited EPFL

• Establishment of Blue Brain Node in Malaysia

• Project comparable to Human Genome scale

Recent Developments at NIIT

• Two faculty members placed in Industry

• IT student intake enhanced to 200

• Four Industry projects in progress

• Two NIIT faculty members proceeding to USA for summer teaching

• Two Japanese Professors joined NIIT for two years teaching and research

• 13 Research papers published during past six months

• One indigenous product Developed -- looking for venture capital?

• Another indigenous product will be ready by end Aug 07

Recent Developments at NIIT

INDUSTRY SPONSORED LABS AT NIIT

• NCR established Dataware housing and Data mining lab at NIIT

• IBM Open Source Resource Center --- Hardware including E-server, Web Sphere Server, Lotus Exchange Server Donated

• INTEL established a state-of-the-art computer lab at NIIT

• IBM established 1 Mil USD funded Open Source Resource center

CONCLUSION

• Coming together is a beginning

• Keeping together is a progress

• Working together is a success

Thank You