1. Grid Computing Its Promise and Challenges Tom Smith Master’s Candidate Computer Science Union College January 2004

2. What is Grid Computing?  The word “grid” is chosen by analogy with the power grid:  “always on” resource  Users don’t need to know where the resource is coming from  Global (or at least national) standard  The Grid may be as revolutionary as the power grid and the PC were at their time of introduction.

3. What is Grid computing?  Classic example: SETI@Home  The basic definition (for today): Grid computing is assembling more than machine or system into a unified resource.  Little agreement about what exactly constitutes a “grid”  Refer to “progression of parallel computing”

4. What is Grid computing?  Ian Foster: Luminous figure in the field, based at U of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory  Argues for a formal definition of the grid

5. Foster’s Definition  Grids are motivated by virtual organizations  Grids are heterogeneous in many ways:  Diverse machine configurations  Diverse network issues  Diverse authentication methods  “Real” grids embrace heterogeneity

6. Foster’s Definition, cont’d  Grids should be able to talk to one another (intergrid protocols)  Most important: grids allow access to a variety of resources (not just cycles)  Sensors  Storage  Databases  Memory  Applications  Etc.

7. Early Success: SETI@Home  Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence  Runs as a screensaver/background app  35GB daily tapes split into 250kb chunks  Almost 5 million users  ~1500 signed up yesterday  1,781,106.179 years of CPU time has been contributed to date

8. Early Success: United Devices  Based on intranet at Novartis (drug research)  Molecular modeling  Alternative to buying a new high- performance computer  Saved $2,000,000 with a $400,000 investment

9. United Devices: cont’d  Projects that would have taken 6 years, now take 12 hours.  Initial test was on 2,700 corporate PCs  So successful, installing it on all 70,000 corporate desktops

10. United Devices: Also available  Grid MP Alliance: sell your corporation’s excess cycles to UD  Grid MP Global: “rent” cycles from UD  Implementation of something that seemed only theoretical short time ago  “Computing on demand”

11. Challenges of Grid computing  Security  Bandwidth/networking  Authentication/authorization  Storage  Reliability: what if a node goes down?  Reporting  Synchronization  Nearly every aspect of computer architecture touched.

12. Strategies for Simplifying Problem  Virtualization/abstraction  Virtual OS  Standards

13. Anatomy of the Grid  Influential paper, 2001: Foster et al.  Introduced notion of virtual organization  Suggested “an open and extensible grid architecture”

14. Physiology of the Grid  Another influential paper  Foster et al., June 2002  New concepts:  Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA)  Shift in focus from “resources” to “grid services”  Grid services are a special instance of web services

15. Web Services  Cross-platform way of letting different systems interact and exchange information  Based on WSDL and SOAP

16. SOAP  Simple Object Access Protocol  Maintained by W3C, current ver. 1.2  XML-based, runs on top of HTTP  Simple, platform-independent way of exchanging info between 2 endpoints  An “envelope” protocol  Click here for example Click here for example Click here for example

17. WSDL  Web Services Description Language  Developed/Supported by IBM, Microsoft  Proposed standard to W3C, latest proposal is version 1.2  XML-based, works in conjunction with SOAP, HTTP, MIME  portType: defines function library or class that is being used/requested  Click here for example Click here for example Click here for example  Click here for Complete WSDL example w/SOAP binding Click here for Complete WSDL example w/SOAP binding Click here for Complete WSDL example w/SOAP binding

18. OGSA and OGSI  OGSA = Open Grid Services Architecture  Web Services + standard grid interfaces = grid services  OGSI = Open Grid Services Infrastructure  OGSI v1.0 was released by Global Grid Forum in June 2003  Click here for illustration of OGSA Click here for illustration of OGSA Click here for illustration of OGSA  Click here for illustration of OGSI Click here for illustration of OGSI Click here for illustration of OGSI

19. Note: Globus Toolkit  Open-source collection of libraries and functions for implementing grids  “De facto standard” for grid software  Foster involved from the beginning  Generated much of OGSA, OGSI

20. Adoption of OGSA/OGSI  Initially, confusion reigned (January 2003)  Situation clearer after release of OGSI (June 2003)  Most of the grid vendors pay at least lip service to OGSA/OGSI  WSDL’s full incorporation of grid concepts may make OGSA/OGSI less important  For example: United Devices’ software makes use of SOAP and WSDL

21. “The” Grid  Akin to “The internet”  Still just a concept  No grids talking to each other in any significant ways yet  Lots of obstacles to overcome first

22. Case Study: GridFTP  GridFTP was a protocol developed by Foster et al. for Globus Toolkit 2.  Click here for image. Click here for image Click here for image

23. Motivations for Grid Computing  High-performance computing  Processor cycle recovery  Resource sharing  Collaboration  Approaches have been parallel so far, but are converging.

24. Questions?

25. Question  Gregory Andrews: “Even most personal computers will soon have a few processors” (2000)  Will the grid make multiprocessor computers irrelevant?

26. Question  Will “The Grid” become as pervasive as the internet?

27. Question  What about bandwidth issues?  How will the irregular rollout of high-speed networks affect the expansion of the grid?

28. Question  Will home PCs play any significant role in high-performance computing?  Will organizations without the need for high-performance computing rent out their resources?  How will the grid change the nature of the PC?

29. Question  According to The New York Times, Europe is exceeding the U.S. in their implementation of grid technologies.  Is this important?