EGEE demonstrates the building blocks needed for grid interoperability

The EGEE grid infrastructure, one of the largest in the world, serves over 100,000 jobs a day, enabling extremely large computational challenges to be performed, helping to solve problems from finding drug-like molecules to use in the war against malaria and other diseases to predicting earthquakes and finding fundamental particles.

EGEE is one of a number of large grid projects around the world, all using a variety of technologies. To enable a truly pervasive grid infrastructures operated by these varied projects different technologies need to be able to talk to each other seamlessly, and it is this level of interoperability that EGEE is working towards, in conjunction with the Open Grid Forum (OGF). OGF aims to have scientific and commercial organizations build operational grids using OGF-defined, standards-based components by 2010.

“Science is becoming truly international with scientific collaborations having the need to share data and compute resources across different providers.” says Erwin Laure, EGEE Technical Director. “Interoperable Grid technologies are a key enabler for this kind of modern science.”

Grids are enabled by middleware, the software that sits between the grid user and the massive resource of computer power and data available. Different technologies for information services, data management, and job management need to interoperate to provide a pervasive infrastructure. For instance, thanks to the interoperability between gLite, EGEE’s middleware distribution, and UNICORE, a technology that provides access to supercomputer resources, cluster and supercomputer resources could be exploited seamlessly.

A demonstration of various building blocks needed to implement pervasive Grid infrastructures will be on show at SuperComputing ’07, at the Reno Sparks Convention Centre, in Reno, Nevada, this week, at the EGEE booth, number 2523.