CONTENTS

SL No Chapter Page Noi

1. INTRODUCTION

2. GRID CONSTRUCTION: GENERAL

PRINCIPLES 2

3. GRID ARCHITECTURE

4. GRID APPLICATIONS

5. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE TRENDS

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Grid Computing

INTRODUCTION

The popularity of the Internet as well as the availability of powerful

computers and high-speed network technologies as low-cost commodity
components is changing the way we use computers today. These technology
opportunities have led to the possibility of using distributed computers as a
single, unified computing resource, leading to what is popularly known as Grid
computing. The term Grid is chosen as an analogy to a power Grid that provides
consistent, pervasive, dependable, transparent access to electricity irrespective
of its source. A detailed analysis of this analogy can be found in. This new
approach to network computing is known by several names, such as
metacomputing, scalable computing, global computing, Internet computing, and
more recently peer-to- peer (P2P) computing.

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Figure 1. Towards Grid computing: a conceptual view.

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Grids enable the sharing, selection, and aggregation of a wide variety of

resources including supercomputers, storage systems, data sources, and
specialized devices (see Figure 1)that are geographically distributed and owned
by different organizations for solving large-scale computational and data
intensive problems in science, engineering, and commerce. Thus creating virtual
organizations and enterprises as a temporary alliance of enterprises or
organizations that come together to share resources and skills, core
competencies, or resources in order to better respond to business opportunities
or large-scale application processing requirements, and whose cooperation is
supported by computer networks.

The concept of Grid computing started as a project to link

geographically dispersed supercomputers, but now it has grown far beyond its
original intent. The Grid infrastructure can benefit many applications, including
collaborative engineering, data exploration, high-throughput computing, and
distributed supercomputing.

A Grid can be viewed as a seamless, integrated computational and

collaborative environment (see Figure 1). The users interact with the Grid
resource broker to solve problems, which in turn performs resource discovery,
scheduling, and the processing of application jobs on the distributed Grid
resources. From the end-user point of view, Grids can be used to provide the
following types of services.

•Computational services. These are concerned with providing secure services

for executing application jobs on distributed computational resources
individually or collectively. Resources brokers provide the services for
collective use of distributed resources. A Grid providing computational services

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is often called a computational Grid. Some examples of computational Grids
are: NASA IPG, the World Wide Grid, and the NSF TeraGrid .

•Data services. These are concerned with proving secure access to distributed
datasets and their management. To provide a scalable storage and access to the
data sets, they may be replicated, catalogued, and even different datasets stored
in different locations to create an illusion of mass storage. The processing of
datasets is carried out using computational Grid services and such a
combination is commonly called data Grids. Sample applications that need such
services for management, sharing, and processing of large datasets are high-
energy physics and accessing distributed chemical databases for drug design.

•Application services. These are concerned with application management and

providing access to remote software and libraries transparently. The emerging
technologies such as Web services are expected to play a leading role in
defining application services. They build on computational and data services
provided by the Grid. An example system that can be used to develop such
services is NetSolve.

•Information services. These are concerned with the extraction and presentation
of data with meaning by using the services of computational, data, and/or
application services. The low-level details handled by this are the way that
information is represented, stored, accessed, shared, and maintained. Given its
key role in many scientific endeavors, the Web is the obvious point of departure
for this level.

•Knowledge services. These are concerned with the way that knowledge is
acquired, used, retrieved, published, and maintained to assist users in achieving
their particular goals and objectives. Knowledge is understood as information

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applied to achieve a goal, solve a problem, or execute a decision. An example of
this is data mining for automatically building a new knowledge.

To build a Grid, the development and deployment of a number of

services is required. These include security, information, directory, resource
allocation, and payment mechanisms in an open environment and high-level
services for application development, execution management, resource
aggregation, and scheduling.

Grid applications (typically multidisciplinary and large-scale processing

applications) often couple resources that cannot be replicated at a single site, or
which may be globally located for other practical reasons. These are some of the
driving forces behind the foundation of global Grids. In this light, the Grid
allows users to solve larger or new problems by pooling together resources that
could not be easily coupled before. Hence, the Grid is not only a computing
infrastructure, for large applications, it is a technology that can bond and unify
remote and diverse distributed resources ranging from meteorological sensors to
data vaults and from parallel supercomputers to personal digital organizers. As
such, it will provide pervasive services to all users that need them.

This paper aims to present the state-of-the-art of Grid computing and

attempts to survey the major international efforts in this area.

Benefits of Grid Computing

Grid computing can provide many benefits not available with traditional
computing models:

• Better utilization of resources — Grid computing uses distributed resources

more efficiently and delivers more usable computing power. This can decrease
time-to-market, allow for innovation, or enable additional testing and simulation

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for improved product quality. By employing existing resources, grid computing
helps protect IT investments, containing costs while providing more capacity.

• Increased user productivity — By providing transparent access to resources,

work can be completed more quickly. Users gain additional productivity as they
can focus on design and development rather than wasting valuable time hunting
for resources and manually scheduling and managing large numbers of jobs.

• Scalability — Grids can grow seamlessly over time, allowing many thousands
of processors to be integrated into one cluster. Components can be updated
independently and additional resources can be added as needed, reducing large
one-time expenses.

• Flexibility — Grid computing provides computing power where it is needed

most, helping to better meet dynamically changing work loads. Grids can
contain heterogeneous compute nodes, allowing resources to be added and
removed as needs dictate.

Levels of Deployment

Grid computing can be divided into three logical levels of deployment:

Cluster Grids, Enterprise Grids, and Global Grids.

• Cluster Grids
The simplest form of a grid, a Cluster Grid consists of multiple systems
interconnected through a network. Cluster Grids may contain distributed
workstations and servers, as well as centralized resources in a datacenter
environment. Typically owned and used by a single project or department,
Cluster Grids support both high throughput and high performance jobs.
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Common examples of the Cluster Grid architecture include compute farms,
groups of multi-processor HPC systems, Beowulf clusters, and networks of
workstations (NOW).

• Enterprise Grids
As capacity needs increase, multiple Cluster Grids can be combined into
an Enterprise Grid. Enterprise Grids enable multiple projects or departments to
share computing resources in a cooperative way. Enterprise Grids typically
contain resources from multiple administrative domains, but are located in the
same geographic location.

• Global Grids
Global Grids are a collection of Enterprise Grids, all of which have
agreed upon global usage policies and protocols, but not necessarily the same
implementation. Computing resources may be geographically dispersed,
connecting sites around the globe. Designed to support and address the needs of
multiple sites and organizations sharing resources, Global Grids provide the
power of distributed resources to users anywhere in the world.

Figure 2 Three levels of grid computing: cluster, enterprise, and global grids.

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GRID CONSTRUCTION: GENERAL PRINCIPLES

This section briefly highlights some of the general principles that

underlie the construction of the Grid. In particular, the idealized design features
that are required by a Grid to provide users with a seamless computing
environment are discussed. Four main aspects characterize a Grid.

•Multiple administrative domains and autonomy. Grid resources are

geographically distributed across multiple administrative domains and owned
by different organizations. The autonomy of resource owners needs to be
honored along with their local resource management and usage policies.

•Heterogeneity. A Grid involves a multiplicity of resources that are

heterogeneous in nature and will encompass a vast range of technologies.

•Scalability. A Grid might grow from a few integrated resources to millions.

This raises the problem of potential performance degradation as the size of
Grids increases. Consequently, applications that require a large number of
geographically located resources must be designed to be latency and bandwidth
tolerant.

•Dynamicity or adaptability. In a Grid, resource failure is the rule rather than

the exception. In fact, with so many resources in a Grid, the probability of some
resource failing is high. Resource managers or applications must tailor their
behavior dynamically and use the available resources and services efficiently
and effectively.

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Design Features

The following are the main design features required by a Grid

environment.

•Administrative hierarchy. An administrative hierarchy is the way that each

Grid environment divides itself up to cope with a potentially global extent. The
administrative hierarchy determines how administrative information flows
through the Grid.

•Communication services. The communication needs of applications using a

Grid environment are diverse, ranging from reliable point-to-point to unreliable
multicast communications. The communications infrastructure needs to support
protocols that are used for bulk-data transport, streaming data, group
communications, and those used by distributed objects. The network services
used also provide the Grid with important QoS parameters such as latency,
bandwidth, reliability, fault-tolerance, and jitter control.

•Information services. A Grid is a dynamic environment where the location and

types of services available are constantly changing. A major goal is to make all
resources accessible to any process in the system, without regard to the relative
location of the resource user. It is necessary to provide mechanisms to enable a
rich environment in which information is readily obtained by requesting
services. The Grid information (registration and directory) services components
provide the mechanisms for registering and obtaining information about the
Grid structure, resources, services, and status.

•Naming services. In a Grid, like in any distributed system, names are used to
refer to a wide variety of objects such as computers, services, or data objects.
The naming service provides a uniform name space across the complete Grid
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environment. Typical naming services are provided by the international X.500
naming scheme or DNS, the Internet’s scheme.
•Distributed file systems and caching. Distributed applications, more often than
not, require access to files distributed among many servers. A distributed file
system is therefore a key component in a distributed system. From an
applications point of view it is important that a distributed file system can
provide a uniform global namespace, support a range of file I/O protocols,
require little or no program modification, and provide means that enable
performance optimizations to be implemented, such as the usage of caches.
•Security and authorization. Any distributed system involves all four aspects of
security: confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and accountability. Security
within a Grid environment is a complex issue requiring diverse resources
autonomously administered to interact in a manner that does not impact the
usability of the resources or introduces security holes/lapses in individual
systems or the environments as a whole. A security infrastructure is the key to
the success or failure of a Grid environment.
•System status and fault tolerance. To provide a reliable and robust environment
it is important that a means of monitoring resources and applications is
provided. To accomplish this task, tools that monitor resources and application
need to be deployed.
•Resource management and scheduling. The management of processor time,
memory, network, storage, and other components in a Grid is clearly very
important. The overall aims to efficiently and effectively schedule the
applications that need to utilize the available resources in the Grid computing
environment. From a user’s point of view, resource management and scheduling
should be transparent; their interaction with it being confined to a manipulating
mechanism for submitting their application. It is important in a Grid that a
resource management and scheduling service can interact with those that may
be installed locally.

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•Computational economy and resource trading. As a Grid is constructed by

coupling resources distributed across various organizations and administrative
domains that may be owned by different organizations, it is essential to support
mechanisms and policies that help in regulate resource supply and demand. An
economic approach is one means of managing resources in a complex and
decentralized manner. This approach provides incentives for resource owners,
and users to be part of the Grid and develop and using strategies that help
maximize their objectives.
•Programming tools and paradigms. Grid applications (multi-disciplinary
applications) couple resources that cannot be replicated at a single site even or
may be globally located for other practical reasons. A Grid should include
interfaces, APIs, utilities, and tools to provide a rich development environment.
Common scientific languages such as C, C++, and Fortran should be available,
as should application-level interfaces such as MPI and PVM. A variety of
programming paradigms should be supported, such as message passing or
distributed shared memory. In addition, a suite of numerical and other
commonly used libraries should be available.
•User and administrative GUI. The interfaces to the services and resources
available should be intuitive and easy to use. In addition, they should work on a
range of different platforms and operating systems. They also need to take
advantage of Web technologies to offer a view of portal supercomputing. The
Web-centric approach to access supercomputing resources should enable users
to access any resource from anywhere over any platform at any time. That
means, the users should be allowed to submit their jobs to computational
resources through a Web interface from any of the accessible platforms such as
PCs, laptops, or Personal Digital Assistant, thus supporting the ubiquitous
access to the Grid. The provision of access to scientific applications through the
Web (e.g. RWCPs parallel protein information analysis system) leads to the
creation of science portals.

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GRID ARCHITECTURE
Our goal in describing our Grid architecture is not to provide a complete
enumeration of all required protocols (and services, APIs, and SDKs) but rather
to identify requirements for general classes of component. The result is an
extensible, open architectural structure within which can be placed solutions to
key VO requirements. Our architecture and the subsequent discussion organize
components into layers, as shown in Figure. Components within each layer
share common characteristics but can build on capabilities and behaviors
provided by any lower layer.

In specifying the various layers of the Grid architecture, we follow the

principles of the “hourglass model”. The narrow neck of the hourglass defines a
small set of core abstractions and protocols (e.g., TCP and HTTP in the
Internet), onto which many different high-level behaviors can be mapped (the
top of the hourglass), and which themselves can be mapped onto many different
underlying technologies (the base of the hourglass). By definition, the number
of protocols defined at the neck must be small. In our architecture, the neck of
the hourglass consists of Resource and Connectivity protocols, which facilitate
the sharing of individual resources. Protocols at these layers are designed so that
they can be implemented on top of a diverse range of resource types, defined at
the Fabric layer, and can in turn be used to construct a wide range of global
services and application-specific behaviors at the Collective layer—so called
because they involve the coordinated (“collective”) use of multiple resources.

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Figure3. The layered Grid architecture and its relationship to the

Internet protocol architecture. Because the Internet protocol
architecture extends from network to application, there is a
mapping from Grid layers into Internet layers.

Fabric: Interfaces to Local Control

The Grid Fabric layer provides the resources to which shared access is
mediated by Grid protocols: for example, computational resources, storage
systems, catalogs, network resources, and sensors. A “resource” may be a
logical entity, such as a distributed file system, computer cluster, or distributed
computer pool; in such cases, a resource implementation may involve internal
protocols (e.g., the NFS storage access protocol or a cluster resource
management system’s process management protocol), but these are not the
concern of Grid architecture.

Fabric components implement the local, resource-specific operations

that occur on specific resources (whether physical or logical) as a result of
sharing operations at higher levels. There is thus a tight and subtle
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interdependence between the functions implemented at the Fabric level, on the
one hand, and the sharing operations supported, on the other. Richer Fabric
functionality enables more sophisticated sharing operations; at the same time, if
we place few demands on Fabric elements, then deployment of Grid
infrastructure is simplified. For example, resource-level support for advance
reservations makes it possible for higher-level services to aggregate
(coschedule) resources in interesting ways that would otherwise be impossible
to achieve. However, as in practice few resources support advance reservation
“out of the box,” a requirement for advance reservation increases the cost of
incorporating new resources into a Grid.

Experience suggests that at a minimum, resources should implement

enquiry mechanisms that permit discovery of their structure, state, and
capabilities (e.g., whether they support advance reservation) on the one hand,
and resource management mechanisms that provide some control of delivered
quality of service, on the other. The following brief and partial list provides a
resource-specific characterization of capabilities.

 Computational resources: Mechanisms are required for starting programs

and for monitoring and controlling the execution of the resulting processes.
Management mechanisms that allow control over the resources allocated to
processes are useful, as are advance reservation mechanisms. Enquiry functions
are needed for determining hardware and software characteristics as well as
relevant state information such as current load and queue state in the case of
scheduler-managed resources.

 Storage resources: Mechanisms are required for putting and getting files.
Third-party and high-performance (e.g., striped) transfers are useful. So are
mechanisms for reading and writing subsets of a file and/or executing remote

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data selection or reduction functions. Management mechanisms that allow
control over the resources allocated to data transfers (space, disk bandwidth,
network bandwidth, CPU) are useful, as are advance reservation mechanisms.
Enquiry functions are needed for determining hardware and software
characteristics as well as relevant load information such as available space and
bandwidth utilization.

 Network resources: Management mechanisms that provide control over

the resources allocated to network transfers (e.g., prioritization, reservation) can
be useful. Enquiry functions should be provided to determine network
characteristics and load.

 Code repositories: This specialized form of storage resource requires

mechanisms for managing versioned source and object code: for example, a
control system such as CVS.

 Catalogs: This specialized form of storage resource requires mechanisms

for implementing catalog query and update operations: for example, a relational
database.

Connectivity: Communicating Easily and Securely

The Connectivity layer defines core communication and authentication

protocols required for Grid-specific network transactions. Communication
protocols enable the exchange of data between Fabric layer resources.
Authentication protocols build on communication services to provide
cryptographically secure mechanisms for verifying the identity of users and
resources.

Communication requirements include transport, routing, and naming.

While alternatives certainly exist, we assume here that these protocols are drawn

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from the TCP/IP protocol stack: specifically, the Internet (IP and ICMP),
transport (TCP, UDP), and application (DNS, OSPF, RSVP, etc.) layers of the
Internet layered protocol architecture. This is not to say that in the future, Grid
communications will not demand new protocols that take into account particular
types of network dynamics.

With respect to security aspects of the Connectivity layer, we observe

that the complexity of the security problem makes it important that any
solutions be based on existing standards whenever possible. As with
communication, many of the security standards developed within the context of
the Internet protocol suite are applicable.

Authentication solutions for VO environments should have the following

characteristics:

 Single sign on. Users must be able to “log on” (authenticate) just once and
then have access to multiple Grid resources defined in the Fabric layer, without
further user intervention.

 Delegation. A user must be able to endow a program with the ability to

run on that user’s behalf, so that the program is able to access the resources on
which the user is authorized. The program should (optionally) also be able to
conditionally delegate a subset of its rights to another program (sometimes
referred to as restricted delegation).

 Integration with various local security solutions: Each site or resource

provider may employ any of a variety of local security solutions, including
Kerberos and Unix security. Grid security solutions must be able to interoperate
with these various local solutions. They cannot, realistically, require wholesale

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replacement of local security solutions but rather must allow mapping into the
local environment.

 User-based trust relationships: In order for a user to use resources from

multiple providers together, the security system must not require each of the
resource providers to cooperate or interact with each other in configuring the
security environment. For example, if a user has the right to use sites A and B,
the user should be able to use sites A and B together without requiring that A’s
and B’s security administrators interact.

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Resource: Sharing Single Resources

The Resource layer builds on Connectivity layer communication and

authentication protocols to define protocols (and APIs and SDKs) for the secure
negotiation, initiation, monitoring, control, accounting, and payment of sharing
operations on individual resources. Resource layer implementations of these
protocols call Fabric layer functions to access and control local resources.
Resource layer protocols are concerned entirely with individual resources and
hence ignore issues of global state and atomic actions across distributed
collections; such issues are the concern of the Collective layer discussed next.

Two primary classes of Resource layer protocols can be distinguished:

 Information protocols are used to obtain information about the structure

and state of a resource, for example, its configuration, current load, and usage
policy (e.g., cost).

 Management protocols are used to negotiate access to a shared resource,

specifying, for example, resource requirements (including advanced reservation
and quality of service) and the operation(s) to be performed, such as process
creation, or data access. Since management protocols are responsible for
instantiating sharing relationships, they must serve as a “policy application
point,” ensuring that the requested protocol operations are consistent with the
policy under which the resource is to be shared. Issues that must be considered
include accounting and payment. A protocol may also support monitoring the
status of an operation and controlling (for example, terminating) the operation.

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Collective: Coordinating Multiple Resources

While the Resource layer is focused on interactions with a single

resource, the next layer in the architecture contains protocols and services (and
APIs and SDKs) that are not associated with any one specific resource but
rather are global in nature and capture interactions across collections of
resources. For this reason, we refer to the next layer of the architecture as the
Collective layer. Because Collective components build on the narrow Resource
and Connectivity layer “neck” in the protocol hourglass, they can implement a
wide variety of sharing behaviors without placing new requirements on the
resources being shared. For example:

 Directory services allow VO participants to discover the existence and/or

properties of VO resources. A directory service may allow its users to query for
resources by name and/or by attributes such as type, availability, or load.
Resource-level GRRP and GRIP protocols are used to construct directories.

 Co-allocation, scheduling, and brokering services allow VO participants

to request the allocation of one or more resources for a specific purpose and the
scheduling of tasks on the appropriate resources. Examples include AppLeS,
Condor-G, Nimrod-G, and the DRM broker .

 Monitoring and diagnostics services support the monitoring of VO

resources for failure, adversarial attack (“intrusion detection”), overload, and so
forth.

 Data replication services support the management of VO storage (and

perhaps also network and computing) resources to maximize data access
performance with respect to metrics such as response time, reliability, and cost.

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 Grid-enabled programming systems enable familiar programming models

to be used in Grid environments, using various Grid services to address resource
discovery, security, resource allocation, and other concerns. Examples include
Grid-enabled implementations of the Message Passing Interface and manager-
worker frameworks.

 Workload management systems and collaboration frameworks—also

known as problem solving environments (“PSEs”)—provide for the description,
use, and management of multi-step, asynchronous, multi-component workflows

 Software discovery services discover and select the best software

implementation and execution platform based on the parameters of the problem
being solved. Examples include NetSolve and Ninf.

 Community authorization servers enforce community policies governing

resource access, generating capabilities that community members can use to
access community resources. These servers provide a global policy enforcement
service by building on resource information, and resource management protocols
(in the Resource layer) and security protocols in the Connectivity layer. Akenti
addresses some of these issues.

 Community accounting and payment services gather resource usage

information for the purpose of accounting, payment, and/or limiting of resource
usage by community members.

 Collaboratory services support the coordinated exchange of information

within potentially large user communities, whether synchronously or

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asynchronously. Examples are CAVERNsoft, Access Grid, and commodity
groupware systems.

These examples illustrate the wide variety of Collective layer protocols

and services that are encountered in practice. Notice that while Resource layer
protocols must be general in nature and are widely deployed, Collective layer
protocols span the spectrum from general purpose to highly application or
domain specific, with the latter existing perhaps only within specific VOs.

Collective functions can be implemented as persistent services, with

associated protocols, or as SDKs (with associated APIs) designed to be linked
with applications. In both cases, their implementation can build on Resource
layer (or other Collective layer) protocols and APIs. For example, Figure shows
a Collective co-allocation API and SDK (the middle tier) that uses a Resource
layer management protocol to manipulate underlying resources. Above this, we
define a co-reservation service protocol and implement a co-reservation service
that speaks this protocol, calling the co-allocation API to implement co-
allocation operations and perhaps providing additional functionality, such as
authorization, fault tolerance, and logging. An application might then use the
co-reservation service protocol to request end-to-end network reservations.

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Figure4. Collective and Resource layer protocols, services, APIs,
and SDKS can be combined in a variety of ways to deliver
functionality to applications.

Collective components may be tailored to the requirements of a specific

user community, VO, or application domain, for example, an SDK that
implements an application-specific coherency protocol, or a co-reservation
service for a specific set of network resources. Other Collective components can
be more general-purpose, for example, a replication service that manages an
international collection of storage systems for multiple communities, or a
directory service designed to enable the discovery of VOs. In general, the larger
the target user community, the more important it is that a Collective
component’s protocol(s) and API(s) be standards based.

Applications

The final layer in our Grid architecture comprises the user applications
that operate within a VO environment. Figure illustrates an application
programmer’s view of Grid architecture. Applications are constructed in terms
of, and by calling upon, services defined at any layer. At each layer, we have
well-defined protocols that provide access to some useful service: resource
management, data access, resource discovery, and so forth. At each layer, APIs
may also be defined whose implementation (ideally provided by third-party
SDKs) exchange protocol messages with the appropriate service(s) to perform
desired actions.

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Figure5. APIs are implemented by software development kits (SDKs), which in turn
use Grid protocols to interact with network services that provide capabilities to the end
user. Higher level SDKs can provide functionality that is not directly mapped to a
specific protocol, but may combine protocol operations with calls to additional APIs as
well as implement local functionality. Solid lines represent a direct call; dash lines
protocol interactions.

We emphasize that what we label “applications” and show in a single

layer in Figure 4 may in practice call upon sophisticated frameworks and
libraries (e.g., the Common Component Architecture , SciRun , CORBA ,
Cactus, workflow systems) and feature much internal structure that would, if
captured in our figure, expand it out to many times its current size. These
frameworks may themselves define protocols, services, and/or APIs. (E.g., the
Simple Workflow Access Protocol .) However, these issues are beyond the
scope of this article, which addresses only the most fundamental protocols and
services required in a Grid.

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GRID APPLICATIONS

What types of applications will grids are used for? Building on

experiences in gigabit testbeds, the I-WAY network, and other experimental
systems, we have identified five major application classes for computational
grids, and described briefly in this section. More details about applications and
their technical requirements are provided in the referenced chapters.

Distributed Supercomputing

Distributed supercomputing applications use grids to aggregate substantial

computational resources in order to tackle problems that cannot be solved on a
single system. Depending on the grid on which we are working, these
aggregated resources might comprise the majority of the supercomputers in the
country or simply all of the workstations within a company. Here are some
contemporary examples:

 Distributed interactive simulation (DIS) is a technique used for training and

planning in the military. Realistic scenarios may involve hundreds of thousands
of entities, each with potentially complex behavior patterns. Yet even the largest
current supercomputers can handle at most 20,000 entities. In recent work,
researchers at the California Institute of Technology have shown how multiple
supercomputers can be coupled to achieve record-breaking levels of
performance.

 The accurate simulation of complex physical processes can require high

spatial and temporal resolution in order to resolve fine-scale detail. Coupled
supercomputers can be used in such situations to overcome resolution barriers
and hence to obtain qualitatively new scientific results. Although high latencies
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can pose significant obstacles, coupled supercomputers have been used
successfully in cosmology, high-resolution abinitio computational chemistry
computations, and climate modeling.

Challenging issues from a grid architecture perspective include the need to

co schedule what are often scarce and expensive resources, the scalability of
protocols and algorithms to tens or hundreds of thousands of nodes, latency-
tolerant algorithms, and achieving and maintaining high levels of performance
across heterogeneous systems.

High-Throughput Computing

In high-throughput computing, the grid is used to schedule large numbers

of loosely coupled or independent tasks, with the goal of putting unused
processor cycles (often from idle workstations) to work. The result may be, as in
distributed supercomputing, the focusing of available resources on a single
problem, but the quasi-independent nature of the tasks involved leads to very
different types of problems and problem-solving methods. Here are some
examples:
• Platform Computing Corporation reports that the microprocessor
manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices used high-throughput computing
techniques to exploit over a thousand computers during the peak design
phases of their K6 and K7 microprocessors. These computers are located
on the desktops of AMD engineers at a number of AMD sites and were
used for design verification only when not in use by engineers.

• The Condor system from the University of Wisconsin is used to

manage pools of hundreds of workstations at universities and laboratories
around the world. These resources have been used for studies as diverse

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as molecular simulations of liquid crystals, studies of ground penetrating
radar, and the design of diesel engines.

• More loosely organized efforts have harnessed tens of thousands

of computers distributed world wide to tackle hard cryptographic
problems.

On-Demand Computing

On-demand applications use grid capabilities to meet short-term

requirements for resources that cannot be cost effectively or conveniently
located locally. These resources may be computation, software, data
repositories, specialized sensors, and so on. In contrast to distributed
supercomputing applications, these applications are often driven by cost-
performance concerns rather than absolute performance. For example:

• The NEOS and NetSolve network-enhanced numerical solver

systems allow users to couple remote software and resources into
desktop applications, dispatching to remote servers calculations that are
computationally demanding or that require specialized software.

• A computer-enhanced MRI machine and scanning tunneling

microscope (STM) developed at the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications use supercomputers to achieve real time
image processing. The result is a significant enhancement in the ability
to understand what we are seeing and, in the case of the microscope, to
steer the instrument.

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• A system developed at the Aerospace Corporation for processing

of data from meteorological satellites uses dynamically acquired
supercomputer resources to deliver the results of a cloud detection
algorithm to remote meteorologists in quasi real time.

The challenging issues in on-demand applications derive primarily from the

dynamic nature of resource requirements and the potentially large populations
of users and resources. These issues include resource location, scheduling, code
management, configuration, fault tolerance, security, and payment mechanisms.

Data-Intensive Computing

In data-intensive applications, the focus is on synthesizing new information

from data that is maintained in geographically distributed repositories, digital
libraries, and databases. This synthesis process is often computationally and
communication intensive as well.

• Future high-energy physics experiments will generate terabytes of

data per day, or around a peta byte per year. The complex queries used
to detect “interesting" events may need to access large fractions of this
data. The scientific collaborators who will access this data are widely
distributed, and hence the data systems in which data is placed are likely
to be distributed as well.
• The Digital Sky Survey will, ultimately, make many terabytes of
astronomical photographic data available in numerous network-
accessible databases. This facility enables new approaches to
astronomical research based on distributed analysis, assuming that
appropriate computational grid facilities exist.

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• Modern meteorological forecasting systems make extensive use of

data assimilation to incorporate remote satellite observations. The
complete process involves the movement and processing of many
gigabytes of data.

Challenging issues in data-intensive applications are the scheduling and

configuration of complex, high-volume data flows through multiple levels of
hierarchy.

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Collaborative Computing

Collaborative applications are concerned primarily with enabling and

enhancing human-to-human interactions. Such applications are often structured
in terms of a virtual shared space. Many collaborative applications are
concerned with enabling the shared use of computational resources such as data
archives and simulations; in this case, they also have characteristics of the other
application classes just described. For example:

• The BoilerMaker system developed at Argonne National

Laboratory allows multiple users to collaborate on the design of emission
control systems in industrial incinerators. The different users interact with
each other and with a simulation of the incinerator.

• The CAVE5D system supports remote, collaborative exploration

of large geophysical data sets and the models that generate them-for
example, a coupled physical/biological model of the Chesapeake Bay.

• The NICE system developed at the University of Illinois at

Chicago allows children to participate in the creation and maintenance of
realistic virtual worlds, for entertainment and education.

Challenging aspects of collaborative applications from a grid architecture

perspective are the real- time requirements imposed by human perceptual
capabilities and the rich variety of interactions that can take place.

We conclude this section with three general observations. First, we note

that even in this brief survey we see a tremendous variety of already successful

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applications. This rich set has been developed despite the significant difficulties
faced by programmers developing grid applications in the absence of a mature
grid infrastructure. As grids evolve, we expect the range and sophistication of
applications to increase dramatically. Second, we observe that almost all of the
applications demonstrate a tremendous appetite for computational resources
(CPU, memory, disk, etc.) that cannot be met in a timely fashion by expected
growth in single-system performance. This emphasizes the importance of grid
technologies as a means of sharing computation as well as a data access and
communication medium. Third, we see that many of the applications are
interactive, or depend on tight synchronization with computational components,
and hence depend on the availability of a grid infrastructure able to provide
robust performance guarantees.

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CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE TRENDS

There are currently a large number of projects and a diverse range of new
and emerging Grid developmental approaches being pursued. These systems
range from Grid frameworks to application testbeds, and from collaborative
environments to batch submission mechanisms.

It is difficult to predict the future in a field such as information

technology where the technological advances are moving very rapidly. Hence, it
is not an easy task to forecast what will become the ‘dominant’ Grid approach.
Windows of opportunity for ideas and products seem to open and close in the
‘blink of an eye’. However, some trends are evident. One of those is growing
interest in the use of Java and Web services for network computing.

The Java programming language successfully addresses several key

issues that accelerate the development of Grid environments, such as
heterogeneity and security. It also removes the need to install programs
remotely; the minimum execution environment is a Java-enabled Web browser.
Java, with its related technologies and growing repository of tools and utilities,
is having a huge impact on the growth and development of Grid environments.
From a relatively slow start, the developments in Grid computing are
accelerating fast with the advent of these new and emerging technologies. It is
very hard to ignore the presence of the Common Object Request Broker
Architecture (CORBA) in the background. We believe that frameworks
incorporating CORBA services will be very influential on the design of future
Grid environments.

The two other emerging Java technologies for Grid and P2P computing
are Jini and JXTA . The Jini architecture exemplifies a network-centric service-
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based approach to computer systems. Jini replaces the notions of peripherals,
devices, and applications with that of network-available services. Jini helps
break down the conventional view of what a computer is, while including new
classes of services that work together in a federated architecture. The ability to
move code from the server to its client is the core difference between the Jini
environment and other distributed systems, such as CORBA and the Distributed
Common Object Model (DCOM).

Whatever the technology or computing infrastructure that becomes

predominant or most popular, it can be guaranteed that at some stage in the
future its star will wane. Historically, in the field of computer research and
development, this fact can be repeatedly observed. The lesson from this
observation must therefore be drawn that, in the long term, backing only one
technology can be an expensive mistake. The framework that provides a Grid
environment must be adaptable, malleable, and extensible. As technology and
fashions change it is crucial that Grid environments evolve with them.

Smarr observes that Grid computing has serious social consequences and
is going to have as revolutionary an effect as railroads did in the American
Midwest in the early 19th century. Instead of a 30–40 year lead-time to see its
effects, however, its impact is going to be much faster. Smarr concludes by
noting that the effects of Grids are going to change the world so quickly that
mankind will struggle to react and change in the face of the challenges and
issues they present. Therefore, at some stage in the future, our computing needs
will be satisfied in the same pervasive and ubiquitous manner that we use the
electricity power grid. The analogies with the generation and delivery of
electricity are hard to ignore, and the implications are enormous. In fact, the
Grid is analogous to the electricity (power) Grid and the vision is to offer
(almost) dependable, consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to resources
irrespective of their location for physical existence and their location for access.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Foster, C. Kesselman, editors. The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing

Infrastructure, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, Calif. (1999).

2. www.globus.org

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/

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