17 November 2004

GOH ADDRESS BY PROF. LAWRENCE WONG, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL GRID OFFICE AT SG@HOME PRIZE GIVING CEREMONY ON WEDNESDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 2004, AT THE MERCURY ROOM, SINGAPORE SCIENCE CENTRE

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

I am very honoured and excited to be here this afternoon for the Prize Presentation for the Singapore @ home (aka SG@home)

Grid Computing involves the aggregation, virtualization and sharing of compute resources for collaboration. A Grid makes compute resources (such as CPU, data, storage, instruments, and applications) securely and transparently accessible to authorized users and applications, across sites and between organizations.

Grid Computing runs the gamut from the humble low-end PC through clusters to supercomputers. Indeed, through the aggregation of a huge number of PCs, it is possible to obtain the computing power of a supercomputer. This is typically referred to as PC Grid Computing. In fact, with the proliferation of mobile computing devices, such as pocket digital assistants (or PDAs) and new generation mobile phones with PDA functionality, it is not unrealistic that Grids could even penetrate into the mobile device environment.

To bring greater awareness of grids, numerous initiatives and projects have been started to excite and engage the masses to contribute idle compute resources to solve complex, yet divisible problems for a common goal. Examples of such projects are seti@home (to look for extra-terrestials), folding@home (to understand protein folding, protein aggregation and related diseases), LigandFit@home (to help process molecular cancer research), Internet Mersenne Prime Numbers Search, cell computing (Japan), and korea@home.

To participate in any of the above projects, a user downloads a client software that runs on the PC as a screensaver. When a PC is idle, the screensaver is activated and it requests a task from its master server. Upon completion of the task, results are returned to the master server, and another task gets dispatched to the PC.

Background on SG@home

Through the use of PC Grid Computing, several countries have embarked upon national scale @home project. The National Grid Office, together with participating agencies, has also initiated such an @home project in Singapore.

The SG@home project aims to harness the spare cycles of PCs in homes, schools and other organizations to work on a cause-worthy and noble grand challenge that appeals to Singaporeans. Of the many tasks that need to be undertaken to get this project off the ground, perhaps the most important is the identification of such a grand challenge. This forms the first phase of our very own SG@home initiative.

Ideas Competition

The aim of this Ideas Competition is to elicit ideas from all of you for a grand challenge project that embodies a combination of enticing, educational and cause-worthy factors. Such a project should be computationally massive while at the same time be amenable to being partitioned into many smaller parts so that each component part can be run simultaneously in smaller compute devices, such as a PC.

The competition is a channel to tap onto the collective creative talents of our students and general public to identify suitable challenges. The competition also creates awareness of Grid computing and promotes it as a pervasive technology. The winning idea(s) may be translated into real application(s) that will run using the aggregated computing power of many PCs in homes, schools and other organizations.

Status of Ideas Competition

Today’s prize-giving event marks the successful completion of the first stage of the SG@home. In this phase, our focus is on eliciting innovative ideas on how best to harness Grid Computing.

Launched on 3 September 2004, the Ideas Competition ran for 6 weeks until 15 October 2004. The competition is a joint collaboration between the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the Ministry of Education (MOE), the Singapore Science Centre (SSC), and the National Grid Office (NGO).

In all, we received 711 submissions, with the bulk (92 %), coming from the Schools category, followed by the Institute of Higher Learning (IHL) category with 4 % and the Open category with 4 %.

I understand that our judging panels have had a challenging time to decide the winners. A representative of the judges will provide an insight on their deliberations later.

Conclusion

In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Hewlett-Packard (Singapore) for their kind sponsorship of the prizes for the three categories.

I would also like to extend my heartiest congratulations to the winners for their innovative ideas.

Here’s wishing everyone a ‘cool’ time this afternoon. Thank you.