The San Diego Supercomputer Center [SDSC] at UC San Diego is part of a team of universities chosen by the National Science Foundation to build and operate an experimental grid test-bed. The “FutureGrid”, as its called, will allow researchers to collaboratively develop and test new approaches to parallel, grid and cloud computing. The four-year project, being led by Indiana University [IU], was awarded a $10.1 million grant from the NSF to link nine computational resources at six partner sites across the country. It will also go towards allowing transatlantic collaboration via a partnership with Grid’5000.
We are pleased to be part of this outstanding team,” said Shava Smallen, SDSC’s principal investigator on the FutureGrid project. “Researchers will be able to test new approaches to data analysis and computation on a wide range of customizable FutureGrid environments made possible by leveraging cloud computing technologies.”
FutureGrid will allow developers to test their software at an unprecedented scale, enabling bugs that currently go undetected in smaller test environments to be fixed before production,” added Smallen, who is also the group lead on SDSC’s Inca program. “This will improve stability of grid software in general, a challenge for many production grids today. As Inca developers, we also expect to benefit from using FutureGrid.”
Partners in the FutureGrid project include Indiana University [project lead], SDSC, Purdue University, University of Chicago/Argonne National Labs, University of Florida, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, University of Tennessee Knoxville, University of Texas/Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Virginia and the Center for Information Services and GWT-TUD from Technische Universtität in Dresden, Germany. The list is essentially a “who’s who” in US-based grid computing research.
For more info, read SDSC’s full release here.