Issue 12.04 | April 2004
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The God Particle and the Grid (continued)
Maybe not, but corporations might be willing to pay for it. Already IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun have large and well-funded grid computing programs under way. The potential for an f/x designer, a civil engineer, or a statistician to tap into remote computing power gives CEOs visions of undreamed-of efficiencies - and will continue to drive investment in grid computing's future.
Then there's you and me. Much of the early hype around grids has spoken of "the Grid" as if there will be one pervasive ultra-network, the way there's one Web. After all, it's being birthed at CERN, where Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web itself more than a decade ago. It's easy to understand why people might still look toward Geneva for radical reimaginings of the ways we use computers. But builders like Robertson and Newman cast a skeptical eye on some of the wilder claims about the magic of grids. Not everything lends itself to parallel processing. Existing grid applications are mostly in the sciences (see "Grids Are Not Vaporware," left). Others might come from arenas that rely on data-intensive calculations: drug design, car crash modeling, cooperative film editing, finance, compression and expansion of massive content files - maybe even optimizing the distribution of goods over wide areas (solving the famous Traveling Salesman problem for actual traveling salesmen). In other words, real concerns, but not exactly everyday ones.
But then, the Web wasn't originally intended for civilians, either. People have a way of repurposing powerful technologies in surprising ways.
Meanwhile, the creators of the LHC grid have a "data challenge" in April to test the new grid with a massive flow of simulated data. It's nerve-racking - their grid still has a way of crashing at inopportune times. It remains a primitive work in progress. Just like the Internet before Tim Berners-Lee first wrote www.
The LHC Computing Grid
Proton collision data from the Large Hadron Collider is collected and crunched by CERN's supercomputing center.
Data from CERN goes to other major research centers, which divide up the analysis.
Computer centers elsewhere - labs and universities - also contribute computational resources.
Collaborators around the world connect to the network and add even more computers.
The end points; researchers get Atlas data, ultrafast connections, and powerful processing.
Grids are not vaporware
The CERN project will join a handful of computing grids that are already operational. Here's a look at some others:
Provides 4.5 teraflops of computing power for collaborations on dark matter, real-time weather prediction, molecular assembly, and other research.
Sponsors: National Science Foundation, various US labs and computing centers
Gives remote access to a steerable, high-energy electron microscope at UC San Diego, as well as data and sims dealing with structures at nano and micro scales.
Sponsor: National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research
Uses the CPU power of investors' PCs to analyze stock market data.
Sponsor: i42 Informationsmanagement
Enables engineers and geologists to collaborate on 3-D, real-time earthquake simulations to design safer buildings.
Sponsors: Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, National Science Foundation
Biomedical Informatics Research Network
Collects and analyzes magnetic resonance images of the brain for researchers studying Alzheimer's disease, depression, and schizophrenia.
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health
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