ACADEMIA

The Open Grid Forum (OGF) today 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." Demonstrations are available in the following booth locations: Argonne National Lab/Globus Alliance #1925 EGEE #559 and 948 HP #1505 Microsoft #305 (including partner demonstrations by Tokyo Institute of Technology and University of Virginia) Platform Computing #1423 UK eScience/OMII-UK #2234 (including partner demonstrations by Genesis II and CROWN)