European Grid Initiative at ISC’08: Supercomputers and Grids – The Future European Ecosystem

The EGI_DS Project Director Dieter Kranzlmüller states that “Science and research today requires that the best computing tools and services are available at the right point in time. Supercomputers and grids are the scientists’ tools, which drive collaborative computational science to new frontiers. When shaping the future European ecosystem, we need to ensure that users are able to choose between the most appropriate tools for their particular needs”.

This view is supported by Kimmo Koski, Managing Director of the Finnish IT Center for Science, CSC, and a member of PRACE Management Board. “Building a European HPC ecosystem requires active collaboration amongst all stakeholders. Since the users need various scales of computing resources – from high end supercomputers to clusters – interoperability such as between the European petascale computing initiative PRACE and EGI, but also with the major European projects such as DEISA and EGEE, is a definite requirement for building sustainable and scalable services. PRACE has a target to collaborate with key European projects, such as EGI, in building a competitive structure for advancing European computational science.”, Koski explains.

The European Grid Initiative Design Study (EGI_DS) project represents an effort to establish a sustainable grid infrastructure in Europe. The preparation work is carried out by the EGI Design Study, which is developing a model for the interaction between the new EGI Organization, the National Grid Initiatives (NGIs), and other potential stakeholders. The EGI Organization is expected to evolve over time to take onboard new technologies and changed user needs. EGI should become one of the driving forces of tomorrow’s European research and technology, enabling science to remain at the cutting edge and industry competitive while ensuring sustainable service provisioning to the users.

The achievements of the EGI_DS and objectives for the EGI are presented at ISC’08. The EGI_DS Project Director Dieter Kranzlmüller will give a joint presentation with the Dissemination advisor of DEISA Wolfgang Gentzsch asking: “Supercomputers or Grids: That is the Question”. The presentation will be held on Friday 20th of June from 11:00am-12:45pm, and of course deals with issues related to the construction of a sustainable grid infrastructure in Europe. Additionally, members of the EGI_DS project team will be present during the whole exhibition at an information stand (C48) for discussions and material distribution.