INDUSTRY

AUSTIN, TX -- Sun Microsystems will donate servers, storage hardware, and network interfaces totaling $55,000 in value to the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). This grant is in response to a recent proposal submitted by Mary Thomas, Manager Grid Computing Group, Chris Hempel, Associate Director, and Boyd Merworth, Senior Operating Systems Specialist to the Sun Academic Equipment Grant Program. TACC will use this hardware to improve its production and development Grid research environments. "We are excited to work closely with Sun and to use Sun equipment because this hardware will allow the TACC Grid environment to operate in the range of TeraGrid and Extended Terascale Facility network speeds and storage capabilities," said Thomas. Specifically, Sun is donating four GigabitEthernet Network Interfaces, a Sun StorEdge T3, a Netra Admin Server (Sun Blade 100), and a Linux x86 General Server. The new Gig-E network will improve TACC's ability to move data at high speeds between its HPC, Grid IT, and data storage resources. The new Sun StorEdge system will be used for the high speed Grid Information Services that TACC is developing in support of several projects, in particular GIS Web Services. Although TACC is involved in many Grid related projects, its primary interest is in three Grid projects of varying geographical scope: 1. The UT-Austin Computing and Information Grid; 2. The Texas Internet Grid for Research & Education (TIGRE), a proposed grid that would link the members of the High Performance Computing Across Texas (HiPCAT) Consortium; and 3. The TeraGrid, a project led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), and the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR). The current grant will augment another recent donation from Sun -- hardware totaling 10 processors, 5GB of memory, and 308GB of mass storage, with a value of approximately $200,000. This previous donation is being used for development and deployment of Grid projects, including the UT Grid, the TIGRE Grid, and the NPACI Grid. In addition, these systems are being used to support portal projects and grid web services research and development. The systems are also being used for extended collaboration reserarch projects as part of TACC's pariticpation in the Department of Energy Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) and National Aeronatics and Space Administration Information Power Grid (IPG) programs, as well as the Grid Computing Environments Reserach Groups (GCE-RG)project that is part of the Global Grid Forum (GGF) including the interoperable web services testbed. For more information visit www.tacc.utexas.edu