European infrastructures and middleware: opportunities for the biomechanical community Marco Petrone

Outline A quick overview on EU Infrastructures A quick overview on EU Grid Projects LHDL: some ideas on possible EU infrastructures and middleware exploitation Credits: Some slides are excerpts of EU commission officers, namely Kyriakos Baxevanidis (Deputy Head of Unit Research Infrastructures) and Wolfgang Boch (Head of Unit of Grid Technologies)

Outline A quick overview on EU Infrastructures A quick overview on EU Grid Projects LHDL: some ideas on possible EU infrastructures and middleware exploitation

The e-Infrastructure today - strategic building blocks GÉANT. INFRASTRUCTURE GÉANT Pan-European Research Network, 3700 institutes, IPv6 enabled (93 M€ - DANTE)  €250m in FP6 EU Research programmes on Grids, networks, etc GRID. INFRASTRUCTURE EGEE production quality grid, CPUs, ~5PB storage, 500 sites, training, 27 countries, 71 partners, HEP, Biomed..., int. links (€32 M - CERN) DEISA grid of EU supercomputers networked at Gbps, focus on global filing system, >120 Tflop/s, several user communities (€15M - CNRS). OMII-EU building blocks to construct grid- infrastructures in flexible & robust way; (€5 M – SOTON)

The e-Infrastructure today - periphery expanding fast New Applications Molecular, Clinical Bioinformatics, Biology Civil Protection Astronomy Grids & Digital Libraries Applications on IPv6 ITHANET BioInfoGrid CYCLOPS EuroVO-DCA, EXPRES DILIGENT 6DISS, IPv6TF Geographical expansion of collaboration Eastern Europe, NIS, Caucasus Latin America Asia (China) Baltic States Mediterranean South-Eastern Europe OCCASION, PORTA OPTICA STUDY ALICE, EELA, AUGERACCESS TEIN2 (EUChinaGrid, ORIENT) BalticGrid EUMedConnect, EUMedGrid, ITHANET SEEREN(2)/SEEFIRE, SEEGRID(2) e-Infrastructure Support, Enhancements Synergy, Outreach, Users Security, Policy support Training SW-interoperability, testing Grid interactive services Control remote instruments QoS, Traffic Monitoring Optical networks Connected Test-beds BELIEF, GO4IT ISSeG, E-IRGSP ICEAGE ETICS int.eu.grid GridCC EUQoS, LOBSTER MUPPED EUROLabs

GÉANT. INFRASTRUCTURE Core connectivity project GÉANT2 NREN Stay the global leader for advanced communication technologies Evolution of the e-Infrastructure (Research Networks) RN: Research Network NREN: National Research Network Focus has been on: Provision of a pan-European and reliable communication backbone – 10 Gbit/s Service to 30 Million users in 35 countries (production quality infrastructures) A test platform for advanced communication experiments New emphasis now on: End-to-end service provision Deployment of light-paths ( km fibre, 400+ active elements) New services to the users (AAI, high speed transfers, access to network measurement data, interface to Grid layer Hybrid network (photonics + IP)

Evolution of the e-Infrastructure (Grids) - interoperability, inclusiveness… GRID. INFRASTRUCTURE eDEISA EGEE-II Focus has been on: New (SW/HW) installations, configuration, stabilisation, robustness Provision of 24/7 operation service (production quality infrastructures) Resource sharing procedures & policies OMII- Europe Re-engineer, provide building blocks for grid- infrastructures to be constructed in a flexible and robust way; build on EGEE (gLite), UNICORE, GLOBUS New emphasis now on: Interoperability Integration of off-the-shelf components, SW-certification, increased functionality Outreach new user communities, all-inclusive infrastructures, lower digital divide Strengthening international links

Production quality facilities but various service schemes Grid service model  Based on two core projects (EGEE, DEISA); others enhance, expand or use the infrastructure that above projects provide  Strong role of some user communities (HEP, Biology); new user communities can only join within the limited resources, structure, duration and support of above projects  EGEE, DEISA become overcrowded as many organisations want to join for more efficient infrastructure use Connectivity service model  Full-fledged operational service to all research institutes in Europe  “One-stop-shop” service on National (NREN) and EU-level (DANTE/GÉANT)  Policy-committee to harmonise policies across Europe  Stable funding scheme

Broad scale test-beds Production quality facilities Sustainable e-Infrastructures (utility model) Sustainable grid-based e-Infrastructures (utility model) Towards sustainable grid-based e-Infrastructures

Need for a European approach on Capability Computing (Supercomputing) Conclusions of a Workshop (21/03/06) on preparing a Supercomputing agenda for FP7 (

Implement a European HPC Platform – vision & ecosystem HPC Performance Pyramid European HPC centre(s) National/regional HPC centers Local HPC centers  To support scientific applications exceeding capacities of national resources  Any European HPC system needs to be significantly bigger than national systems in the same time frame  Petaflop capacity by 2009  The HPC infrastructure is a needed integral resource component of the European Science Grid infrastructure  Pyramid or two-tier shape for infrastructure: Petaflop machines (Tier- 1) at the pyramid top; existing National/Regional centres form Tier-2  The two tiers to be strongly integrated together into a global grid “à la DEISA” with a unique operational & service provisioning model Tier-1 Tier-2

Implement a European HPC Platform – vision & ecosystem  Different architectures to support different algorithmic processes (rather than different disciplines)  Centres of Excellence to host Peta-scale facilities  A sustainable ecosystem for exploiting Computational Science through HPC requires a European Expertise and Services infrastructure (for code optimisation, numerical analysis, code porting, data mng …) along with investments on HW, logistics...  Implement a steady program to continuously invest and upgrade on top of national infrastructures rather than a single one-time investment

Outline A quick overview on EU Infrastructures A quick overview on EU Grid Projects LHDL: some ideas on possible EU infrastructures and middleware exploitation

Grid Strategy towards the Lisbon Objectives  Leadership  Competitiveness  Addressing standardization, regulation, …  Innovation framework  Leveraging additional investments  Developing new methods, tools, systems and services  Advance excellence and know-how  Long-term and business-driven R&D  Integration – structuring - standardisation  Coordination of National Programmes  Opening-up of National Programmes  International cooperation (CHINA, …)  Build critical mass  Derive standardisation strategy Research & Development Technology Platform European Research Area

Networked European Software and Services Initiative launched in Brussels on 7 September Mission: Develop a visionary strategy for Software and Services driven by a common European Research Agenda where innovation and business strengths are reinforced A European Technology Platform for SW, Grids & e-Services

WP (Call 4 + Call 5) Advanced Grid Technologies, Systems and Services Application Pull Technology Push Network-centric Grid Operating Systems Potential new fabric layer for future distributed systems and services Grid Foundations Architecture, design and development of technologies and systems for building the invisible Grid Grid-enabled Applications & Services for business and society Research, development, validation and take-up of generic environments and tools Applications e-business, e-health, e-gov, e-learning Environment Advanced Grid Technologies, Systems and Services Application Sector 3 Application Sector 2 Application Sector n Application Sector 1

FP6 Grid Technologies Projects – Calls 2, 3, 5 Datamining Grid OntoGrid InteliGrid K-WF Grid CoreGRID six virtual laboratories UniGridsHPC4U Provenance NextGRID service architecture Akogrimo mobile services SIMDAT industrial simulations data, knowledge, semantics, mining KnowArc Chemomen tum A-WareSorma platforms, user environments Specific support actionIntegrated projectNetwork of excellenceSpecific targeted research project g-EclipseGrediaGridComp QosCosGrid Grid4all AssessGrid GridTrust trust, security Grid services, business models ArguGrid Grid GridEcon Nessi-Grid Challengers Degree BREIN agents & semantics XtreemOS Linux based Grid operating system supporting the NESSI ETP & Grid community BeinGrid business experiments EU Funding: 124 M€

Outline A quick overview on EU Infrastructures A quick overview on EU Grid Projects LHDL: some ideas on possible EU infrastructures and middleware exploitation

LHDL Objectives The Living Human Project aims to create an in silico model of the human musculo-skeletal apparatus which can predict how mechanical forces are exchanged internally and externally at any dimensional scale from the whole body down to the protein level. The LHDL project aims to develop the core ICT infrastructure that is required for the Living Human Project

LHDL ICT Infrastructure and Services Community Building and Collaborative Work: WEB Portal, Forums, Wiki pages, Document repository, Workflow and Policy support, Bug Trackers, etc. Storage Services: data collection and metadata DB, catalog search, data federation, fast data transfer and caching. Computing Services: simulations, optimizations, statistical analysis, post-processing Fat Clients Interface: Grid enabled applications. MAF: a rapid application development framework.

ICT Services for Researchers ICT Services for the scientific community: Good quality Professionally managed Sustainable model

ICT Infrastructure: Middleware Services will need e-infrastructure to provide middleware and tools to manage virtual organizations: Storage and Access to services and data produced by researchers. Access to infrastructure resources. Allowing the definition of access policies, and monitoring of the access: AAA. Standard interfaces for interoperability: WS, WS-RF, OGSA, etc.

Community Applications Deployment Deployment to large scale facility –Fast and large storage –Enabling or even Capability Computing –High speed continental network connections for quick transfer of federated data –Production quality services and infrastructure Deployment to smaller facility: –Simplify technological problems –Limited service quality and capability –Would anyway take advantage from a federation with the grid. Dependence from and the maturity of grid middleware is still an open question.

Thanks!