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NUS AND SCS UNVEIL BIGGEST SUPERCOMPUTING GRID IN THE REGION
- Plugs NUS into Singapore's first tera-scale campus-wide
grid - a virtual supercomputing
platform that rivals the top supercomputers
on Top500.org
- Employs industry-leading commercial grid technology from
United Devices
- Breakthrough is largest of its kind in the region outside
of US and Europe
Singapore,
16 November 2004 - The National University of Singapore
(NUS) and Singapore Computer Systems Limited (SCS)
today announced the setting-up of a world-class supercomputing
grid at NUS - the Tera-Scale Campus Grid or TCG@NUS.
TCG@NUS is Singapore's first large-scale campus-wide grid
implementation which harnesses idle computing capacity to
generate high-speed computing power.
TCG@NUS
is a groundbreaking regional project, as it is the largest
of its kind among educational institutions outside
of the US and Europe. Renowned US universities, which are
already connected to campus-wide grids, include Purdue, Texas
A&M and the University of Florida.
Comparable to world's fastest supercomputers
Initially, 800 computers will be aggregated to form the
grid. Using a prudent estimation method, the 800 computers
can yield a theoretical peak performance of 2 to 6 Teraflops
or 2 to 6 trillion floating-point operations per second.
This ability to perform tera-scale computations will catapult
the TCG@NUS grid to the top 500 rankings of the world's fastest
supercomputers, if implemented within a single machine. The
top five supercomputers in the world, including the Earth
Simulator in Japan, have a theoretical peak performance of
between 15.30 to 40.96 Teraflops.
Project details
SCS, one of Asia Pacific's leading information and communications
service providers, will link NUS computers into the grid.
SCS' involvement in the systems integration of the project
includes:
Infrastructure deployment, consisting of system software
for the servers and agent software for the node computers;
Hardware deployment for the servers managing and controlling
TCG@NUS; and
Development and enabling of applications to be deployed on
TCG@NUS.
The grid management infrastructure will be implemented using
United Devices' Grid MPTM Platform. United Devices is a leading
provider of secure grid solutions with a proven track record
of building large-scale, heterogeneous grids. Its Grid MPTM
platform creates a virtual infrastructure that enables existing
computer systems and networks to be translated into shared
resources.
In May 2004, SCS was appointed as the official value-added
reseller of United Devices' products - the first in this
region except for Japan.
Win-win collaboration
NUS and SCS today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU)
to collaborate on the project.
Speaking
at the launch of TCG@NUS, NUS Provost Professor Tan Chorh
Chuan, said, "We are delighted to join forces
with SCS to set up TCG@NUS, which will enhance the quality
of our research and allow NUS to break important new research
grounds. Many NUS research programmes, for example in fields
such as biochemistry and financial engineering will benefit
substantially from this. As one of the region's leading academic
and research institutions, we are proud to host the region's
first supercomputing grid network in the educational field."
Said
Mr Pek Yew Chai, President and CEO of SCS, "We
are proud to collaborate with NUS to launch TCG@NUS, especially
since this new paradigm will put NUS at the forefront of
supercomputing ability in this region's educational field.
At SCS, grid and cluster computing plays an important role
in our strategy of expanding the breadth and depth of our
solutions. TCG@NUS will serve as another important reference
site for us, as it enhances our track record in the area
of grid and cluster computing and entrenches our position
as a leader in this field. Our associate company - Scalable
Systems, is already a leader in the cluster computing space
with their Scalable Rocks cluster software, which has customers
and partners globally today. We expect grid and cluster computing
to be a key driver for SCS."
Boosting NUS' competitive advantage
This breakthrough catapults NUS into a regional leader in
supercomputing ability and strengthens its image as a distinguished
university in this region.
The super-speed computational capabilities harnessed from
the grid will spur new possibilities in academic research,
allowing NUS researchers to explore new ideas, widen their
research scope and break boundaries. Researchers will be
able to perform simulation of synthetic environments, handle
large amounts of data, execute sophisticated calculations
and run complex models and applications that ordinarily would
be too huge for a single computer to handle. This enables
more productive studies and accurate analysis.
Researchers in the areas of biochemistry, life sciences,
financial engineering, cryptography and digital media will
stand to benefit from tapping this cutting-edge grid technology
- as many top pharmaceutical companies are already doing.
For example, at the Department of Biochemistry, researchers
will be able to enhance molecular modelling and docking for
the discovery of new drugs. The increased processing power
of TCG@NUS will dramatically cut down the lead-time of analysis
of interactions or dynamics between a small ligand and a
receptor molecule from 3-5 weeks to a few hours.
The Centre for Financial Engineering at NUS will also be
applying grid computing in two Financial Engineering research
areas - namely in the Pricing of Complex Exotic Options and
Structured Products using Monte-Carlo Simulations and in
enterprise risk management study which requires the aggregation
of the pricing and hedging of individual financial products
to obtain a broad picture of an institution's overall risk.
The massive computational power of TCG@NUS would enable
researchers to widen their scope of research. For instance,
researchers in genomics will be able to include more complex
genomes like the human and mouse, which have more sequences.
TCG@NUS also creates new capabilities by exploiting existing
computer resources, without the need to deploy new computer
hardware, as capacity and distribution of workload is shared
across a network of hundreds or thousands of separate processors.
This is the best illustration of grid computing value, providing
multi-million dollar computing capabilities at a fraction
of the cost, translating into significant cost savings.
Entrenching Singapore's leadership in grid computing
TCG@NUS reinforces Singapore's leadership in grid computing
and entrenches the country's position as a hot bed for this
next step in the evolution of the IT environment. It also
paves the way for new commercial and research opportunities
in the future.
According to an April 2004 IDC report, the grid computing
market is estimated to exceed US$12 billion by 2007. Singapore,
with its strong IP and IT skill, will stand to benefit from
its position as a regional computing service hub.
Already, grid computing is revolutionising the way companies
do business, by supporting enhanced communications, cutting
costs and improving time-to-market.
Commenting
on this trend, Mr Pek said, "We are seeing
the increasing use of Grid technology in areas such as Digital
Media, Life Sciences and Engineering R&D. We already
have customers who are exploring with us the ability to link
their in-house Linux clusters to a central grid resource
for additional computing power when they exceed their peak
capacity. This scenario would become increasingly common
as more and more vendors offer grid or utility computing
and as customers seek to lower their operations costs."
"Well-known global companies are already tapping on
grid computing. For example, Charles Schwab, the global financial
services giant, has taken grid computing one step further
by leveraging on this cutting edge technology and its own
resources to integrate data and perform better analysis of
its customers' profiles. This allows the company to provide
better, targeted product offerings and optimal portfolios
to its customers. In the area of digital media, grid computing
offers scalability and enables the digital restoration of
old films and the layering of special effects. Companies,
such as Lucas Films, maker of the Star Wars trilogy, have
already begun to use grid computing to break new grounds
in high definition film making," added Mr Pek.
"Indeed, companies can take bigger, bolder steps in
driving their businesses with grid computing. It won't be
long before Singapore companies jump on this bandwagon to
tap the tremendous opportunities grid computing can offer," concluded
Mr Pek.
[Source:
Media Release by SCS]
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