banner

#
About Us

Seminars
Articles
Press
Events
Applications
Links
#


 

 


SG@HOME IDEAS COMPETITION RECEIVES INNOVATIVE IDEAS FOR SHARING COMPUTING RESOURCES

17 Nov 2004

SINGAPORE, 17 November 2004 – From weather/climate forecast, to new age drama show and cryptography for national defence, these are some of the winning entries for the SG@Home Ideas Competition. These 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 organisations.

Held from 3 September to 15 October 2004, the Competition tapped onto the collective creative talents of our students and the general public to identify suitable ideas for the SG@home – a project that aims to harness the spare cycles of PCs in homes, schools and other organisations.

The competition was jointly organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the Educational Technology Division of the Ministry of Education (MOE), the National Grid Office (NGO) and the Singapore Science Centre (SSC).

The competition has 3 categories: Schools, Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) and Open. There are 3 prizes for each category. In addition, for the Schools and IHLs categories, a prize will be awarded to the school and IHL that has contributed the most number of shortlisted ideas. The prizes are sponsored by Hewlett-Packard.

Dr Koh Thiam Seng, Director, Educational Technology Division of the Ministry of Education said “This competition offered a good opportunity for students to learn more about grid computing, a potentially useful emerging technology, and to exercise their creative talents to come out with innovative ideas on the application of this technology."

In all, 711 submissions were received, out of which, more than 650 entries were from the Schools category. Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) won the award for the highest number of shortlisted innovative ideas for the Schools Category while the honours for the IHLs Category went to National University of Singapore. (Please refer to Annex A for the list of winning entries)

The entries covered a wide range of areas, such as arts, defence and technology, and health. These challenges typically require huge amounts of compute resources. With grid computing, it would definitely cut down efforts and resources and allow more ideas to be tried out.

“In our opinion, schools and institutes of higher learning are one of the best learning grounds to experiment with new solutions and to understand how new technology can best be integrated into the real world – both academically and commercially. The SG@Home project complements HP’s efforts in fostering collaboration for a truly operational Grid,” said Leong Say Haur, General Manager and Director (Customer Solutions Group) of HP Singapore.

For further information on the SG@home Ideas Competition, please refer to the SG@home website at www.ngp.org.sg/sghome.

About National Grid Office

The National Grid Office (NGO) was set up on 2 January 2003. The National Grid vision is to realize "a Singapore where computing resources can be connected together via a high-speed network such that these resources can be shared in a secure, reliable and efficient manner by authenticated users for education, commercial, entertainment, research and development, national security, and other purposes so as to improve the economic & technological competitiveness of Singapore and also the quality of life in Singapore.

NGO aim to develop the framework and infrastructure to achieve the vision for National Grid by the following means: Formulate the framework and policies; Plan and develop a secure platform; Adopt common open standards; Encourage the adaptation of Grid Computing; Demonstrate the commercial viability of compute-resource-on-tap; and Lay the foundation for a vibrant Grid Computing economy. For more information, please visit www.ngp.org.sg.

About Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) is committed to growing Singapore into a dynamic global infocomm hub. IDA uses an integrated approach to developing infocommunications in Singapore. This involves nurturing a competitive telecoms market as well as a conducive business environment with programmes and schemes for both local and international companies. For more information, please visit www.ida.gov.sg


About Educational Technology Division/Ministry of Education

The Educational Technology Division (ETD) of the Ministry of Education champions the use of educational technologies to enhance educational processes. ETD provides customised professional development to teachers, consultancy for technology planning in schools, digital resource development to support the curriculum and leads in research and development programmes to support the implementation of the second Masterplan for IT in education. For more information, please visit www.moe.gov.sg.

About Singapore Science Centre

The Singapore Science Centre (SSC) promotes science and technology through exploration, discovery and non-formal self-learning to the public and to students via an integrated approach consisting of interactive exhibits, hands-on enrichment programmes, scientific publications and outreach activities. It has brought science into shopping malls, open parks and onto television screens. The SSC houses about 1000 exhibits and a 276-seater Omnimax theatre. For more information please visit www.science.edu.sg.

About Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Parkard is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended July 31, 2004, HP revenue totaled $78.4 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.

For more information, please contact:

Choo Thong Tiong
Assistant Head (Promotion)
National Grid Office
21 Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Singapore 119613

Tel: (65) 6874-5583
Fax: (65) 6872-1361
Email: thongtiong@ngp.org.sg

______________________________________________________________

Annex A: Winners of the SG@home Ideas Competition

Schools Category

First Prize (Schools) : Weather/Climate Forecast
Submitted by: Celine Koh (Victoria Junior College)
Description:

Currently, the ex-fastest supercomputer in the world (recently superseded by IBM's Blue Gene/L), the Earth Simulator, is used to analyse climate change patterns. It has a sustained performance of 35.86 teraflops. Through the aggregration of millions of home computers, the total processor speed may exceed this value, resulting in more efficient and accurate analysis of the climate change patterns.

Weather is an intrinsic element of our lives and affects everyone, everywhere, Singapore included. In tropical Singapore in particular, the weather is highly unpredictable. Plans for a barbeque at ECP in the evening are dashed at 3pm that day because the skies above have opened. Increasingly, as we near the end-of-year monsoon season, the weather has become even more erratic.

Grid computing will enable the harnessing of unused processor speeds from PCs of home users everywhere. This processor speed, together with real-life climate data obtained from satellites and ocean buoys etc, can then be used to chart and predict the weather and climate accurately. Often however, especially for tropical islands like Singapore, the weather forecast provided is vastly inaccurate and hence this grand challenge would appeal to most people.

Warning of impending thunderstorms could potentially minimize the danger caused by lightning. This information could be disseminated by using Short Message Service (SMS). SMSs could be sent to people with mobile phones within for example, a 10km radius of an area where a thunderstorm is predicted to occur. Every year, people in Singapore die from the electric shock caused by lightning. If people could be told in advance that a certain area is likely to be struck by lightning, they may well avoid the area and who knows, fewer lives may be lost due to lightning strikes.

If implemented, this could make life a lot more convenient for Singaporeans. We would no longer have to peer up at the sky and wonder if the sunshine will soon fade to grey and foil our plans for the day. Now wouldn’t that be nice?

Second Prize (Schools): Improve Cancer Diagnosis
Submitted by: Eri Sasaki (CHIJ St. Nicholas Girls’ School)
Description:

The grid will enable participating hospitals to quickly access medical data at distant locations and share analytical programs that would be able to help in diagnosis. The grid will also utilize sophisticated algorithms to uncover possible cancer patterns that appear in the population. By culling through data input at various hospitals, the system will be able to spot an abnormal concentration of the disease in a particular community or ethnic group. Another advantage of grid computing is that it allows administrators to more closely manage data spread across a variety of computers running various operating systems. This challenge appeals to those people diagnosed with cancer. Participating hospitals would be able to learn more about algorithms and some things about the computer as well as cancer diagnosis, enabling them to work more efficiently the next time. Breast cancer should be targeted for Singapore.

Third Prize (Schools): Game of GO
Submitted by: Andrew Lee Jia-Hong
(Anglo-Chinese School, Independent)
Description:

Deep Blue is well-known for machine playing & winning chess games with human grandmasters.

With the availability of immense compute processing power, we should take on more challenging games like Go or Chinese Chess (xiang qi), which is much more difficult to play than chess and which requires pattern recognition of the kind that many many computers put together can handle.

Go is known to be a more complex game than chess as there are many more board positions to evaluate. The listing of available computer programs can be found at www.usgo.org/resources/computer.asp.

I am not so sure about the current status & strengths of computer programs in Chinese Chess. Some useful URLs are:www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Grid/6544/cccintro.htm, www.boardgamecentral.com/games/xiangqi.html, etc. A Google search with key words like "chinese chess" and "computer program" yields many such programs.

There are some ways to implement my idea:

a) Set up a web site that will become THE place on the Internet for the game (Go or Chinese Chess). As Singapore is an Asian country, this association with either game (of Asian origin) is useful. Maybe we can get the local association for the game to be involved.

b) Get people to donate computing resources to power the computer game and pit it against human players in organized virtual tournaments.

c) For publicity, arrange for ranked human players to pit their wits against the grid-powered game program.

d) Put the running score of "kills" against human players on the web site to create an aura of awe ...

e) Maybe we can pit 2 different game programs against each other, each powered by different no. of CPUs. The choice of which program to support is decided by the computer owners who donate their CPU time. This can promote better research into improving better Go/Chinese Chess programs among students. Maybe the developers can be encouraged to use thus web site to showcase their games as well.

f) The idea in (e) can also become Singapore's e-casino.

______________________________________________________________

IHLs Category

First Prize (IHLs): New Age Drama Show
Submitted by: Chee Pooi Mun (Nanyang Polytechnic)
Description:

As technology advances, people can make use of these advances to enhance their work efficiency. I would like to introduce my idea to be used hand in hand with Grid Computing.

Over many decades, drama productions are made with huge amount of manpower, money and time. In the past, a large drama creation may take months and months, or up to a year. A large number of materials like painted background, woodwork, canvas, etc. for creating a scene have to be designed and made. The same applies to costumes and related accessories for all the actors in the play. To carry out a full rehearsal for the play, additional items like makeup for the artistes, lighting, sound effects and a drama theatre would be needed. Before a production is completed, they are usually many changes required of the scenes, costumes, lightings, sound effects, etc. These changes can significantly increase the cost and time required to complete the drama production.

I believe grid computing is able to help in reducing cost and time in a drama production.

My idea in this new age virtual drama show is to make use of multimedia grid computing system to create a virtual version of a theater show prior to making the real one. Graphics, photographs, special effects and animations can be used to simulate the desired scenes in the play. Grid computing, with its immense computing power can be used to create the entire virtual shows within a reasonable time frame and cost. Changes to any part of the play can be carried out more easily in the virtual show than in the real one. The manpower required will also be much less than in creating a real drama show.

The virtual show is created on the computer following the movie script with all the required scenes and costumes. The completed show can then be shown to the show sponsors, producers, directors, actors and all related personnel for viewing, comment and feedback. If there are many changes to be made, the many changes can be carried out at the same time on the many computers in a grid computing network. Each computer will be doing different jobs and will send their results back to the client computer for compilation into final required version. When the whole production team is satisfied with the results, the making of the actual production can begin. Therefore manual workload can be lessened thus increasing speed and reducing time wastage.

The following are some suggestions for shows using this platform:

1. Collectively produce a stage play on the past, present and future of Singapore.
2. Collectively produce operas of different races in Singapore.
3. Concerted effort to make Singapore a more gracious society by bringing theatre arts closer to its people.
4. Playing a part in making our cultural scene much more vibrant.
5. Donate idle computer cycles to help set up a virtual theatre stage for our budding young artists.

This idea can appeal to drama producers and the consumers market. The producers can make use of the idea to speed up their production process to reduce time and cost. Shorter production time means more productions per year and this will mean wider choice of stage plays for the public. Lower production cost that can be translated into lower ticket prices. Consumers can have a preview of the drama on screen before deciding whether to watch the real show. With this idea, may be we would be able to create more drama shows in the future and hence giving ourselves more choices.

Second Prize (IHLs): Turbulence
Submitted by: Lim Wee Chuan (National University of Singapore)
Description:

Turbulence has been regarded by some researchers as the most difficult and last unsolved problem of classical physics. Despite its earlier origins than some of the greatest theories of physics such as relativity and quantum theory, no general theory of turbulence exists today. The importance of turbulence spans across a diverse spectrum of disciplines ranging from Aeronautical Engineering where it exerts complex and often undesirable effects such as drag over the wings of airplanes or hulls of ships and submarines to Chemical Engineering where its presence is desirable for enhancing mixing in reactors, heat and mass transfer rates in heat exchangers and separation equipment. It is well recognized that turbulent flows often exhibit many complex phenomena at different length and time scales. The largest length scales are determined by the characteristic dimensions of the system and usually exhibit interestingly organized structures, otherwise known as coherent structures, in the form of eddies or vortices amidst the seemingly random flow field. On the other hand, the smallest scales of turbulence where viscous dissipation takes place are known as the Kolmogorov scales. With the advent of powerful supercomputers, many researchers have resorted to numerical simulations to advance our understanding of this subject. However, this approach is exceedingly difficult and expensive due primarily to the wide separation of scales, non-linearity of the governing equations and apparent chaotic nature of the systems. As such, most computations performed to-date have been targeted at resolving the large-scale structures of turbulence using techniques such as Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes, Large/Detached Eddy Simulations with empirical Subgrid Scale models to account artificially for small-scale effects.

One alternative and novel approach is to apply a discrete, mesoscale modeling technique known as Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) for turbulence modeling of various fundamental systems such as boundary layers, jets, wakes and free-shear flows. DPD is a coarse-grained model with a good statistical-mechanical basis applicable to mesoscales where diffusive processes are important. At the same time, it reproduces the Navier-Stokes equations at macroscopic scales so that proper descriptions of hydrodynamic behaviors are guaranteed. It has been applied successfully to multiphase flows, flows through porous media, drop dynamics, rheology of polymer solutions and others. DPD represents fluid clusters rather than molecules using discrete particles. It is hypothesized that this mesoscaling technique may be capable of simulating turbulence processes at the Kolmogorov scales while at the same time reproducing the large-scale coherent structures, thus effectively spanning across the entire spectrum of turbulence. To achieve realistic macroscopic length and time scales, the number of dissipative particles and time steps to be simulated may each be in the order of millions, requiring computers with teraflops capabilities. However, this type of computation is also very amenable to grid computing due to the short-ranged interactions between dissipative particles and the possibility of dividing the entire computational domain into a large number of weakly dependent sub-domains. Each sub-domain containing typically from hundreds to thousands of dissipative particles would then be manageable by computers with modest memory sizes and processing speeds such as PCs.

On a planetary scale, it has also allowed for the possibility of both local weather forecasting as well as global climate predictions. The weather is important to the aviation and shipping industries and certainly to the livelihoods of the general public in Singapore as well as worldwide. The idea of Numerical Weather Prediction is expected to appeal to both the aviation and shipping industries of Singapore. It is also in line with the interests of some national research institutes. Last but certainly not the least, it is expected to have high mass appeals to the general population of the country.

Third Prize (IHLs): Traffic Control and Simulation
Submitted by: Wang Zhen (Nanyang Technological University)
Description:

Singapore has been enjoying an advanced transportation infrastructure for years. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has won international acclaim for many achievements, for example, in developing an efficient Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, in managing urban traffic using the world’s first ever electronic road pricing (ERP) scheme, and in application of intelligent traffic control facilities (GLIDE, EMAS, J-EYES etc.) But that is just the beginning of a continuous process to forge a world class transport system. We still face tough challenges, which demand the power of distributed computing technologies.

If you are living in Singapore, you probably have experienced one of the following scenarios: on a sunny weekend, your car gets trapped in the big Orchard Road Jam, it crawls from one end of Somerset Road to Ngee Ann City for over half an hour, choking your shopping craze to a total death; worse nightmare happens if you are a commuter traveling from Woodlands Checkpoint to Malaysia – the endless queue of motorists makes you wonder how awesome it looks like from a bird’s eye view.

Will an increase of ERP charges curb the Orchard Road Jam?

Will the second link at Tuas subdue the Woodlands congestion?

These questions are hard to answer, and a wrong answer usually costs much. To better predict the result of a change in transportation infrastructure or policies, we could build a computational model (i.e. cognitive multi-agent system or gas-kinetic model) which helps us evaluate the pros and cons of a big decision beforehand. For example, if the government legalised a casino on the Sentosa tourist resort, potential traffic bottlenecks might be highlighted by this system so that precautionary measures could be taken. Besides the capacity of global traffic simulation, this system could also optimise local routing of vehicles, hopefully in real-time. For example, its simulation result of driver behaviours could be exploited by the traffic light control system (GLIDE) to minimise the overall waiting time at road junctions. Do not underestimate the benefits. LTA reports that motorists stand to save about $40 million a year because of the existing GLIDE system, which only covers a fraction of the roads and still needs much improvement.

A globally optimal traffic light switching scheme would minimise our overall waste of time, maximise the traffic flow, and prevent congestions. This highly complex optimisation problem requires sophisticated vehicle sensors and massive computing resources for real-time performance. Grid computing technology therefore might be very beneficial in this application domain. Microscopically, it helps to simulate and predict driver behaviours in segmented local areas using cognitive multi-agent system or similar models; or, a macroscopic approach might be adopted to optimise traffic control based on gas-kinetic models. Both tasks are divisible and thus computable in distributed parallelism.

Realistic simulation of traffic model, however, requires a huge amount of computing resources; fortunately the task is divisible and computable in parallelism. A distributed computing project like SG@home therefore could be very beneficial in this application domain. It would be a cool way for an individual to contribute his/her spare CPU cycles to this project pro bono publico, collaboratively bettering the transportation system of Singapore with many other enthusiastic volunteers who care about it as much as LTA does. It would also be cool for an individual to contribute his/her spare CPU cycles to this project pro bono publico. "See that traffic light ahead? My imac at home is its co-coordinator!"

______________________________________________________________

Open Category

First Prize (Open): Cryptography
Submitted by: Leong Kok Hong
Description:

I believe many people have heard of public-key cryptography. Public-key algorithms, also known as asymmetric algorithms, are based on the use of two different sets of key for data encryption. The private key must be knows only to its user, and the public key can be known by anyone. The encryption algorithm is the same at both ends: what is encrypted with one key shall be decrypted with the other key using the same algorithm.

In a secure conversation using public-key cryptography, the sender encrypts a message using the receiver’s public key. The key is called “public” because it shall be make known to everyone. The encrypted message is sent to the receiving end, which will decrypt the message with its own private key. However, only the receiver can decrypt the message because no one else has the private key.

Unfortunately, terrorist cells and organized criminals around the region are capable to make good use of the existing cryptography technology to communicate, plan and coordinate among themselves in advance on their future terror strikes.

In the public-key system, it is relatively easy to compute the public key from the private key, but extremely hard to compute the private key from the public key. Some algorithms need several years of constant computation to obtain the private key from the public key. Therefore as long as the receiver keeps the private key secret, no one but the receiver will be able to decrypt the messages encrypted with the corresponding public key.

Unlike the RC5 project in “distributed.net” that calculates the RSA Labs 72-bit secret-key challenge with a dummy message for the purpose of cracking longer symmetric keys, the proposed grand challenge would utilize grid computing with hundred thousands of nodes connected across Singapore to assist our home security team to compute the private (asymmetric) keys of any suspicious messages intercepted in our public networks, and assist our home security team to expose any likely terrorist assaults in advance, and help protecting our citizens and public infrastructures in Singapore.

The proposed “Asymmetric-key Breaker” project is cool because it is capable of utilizing several hundred thousands of computing nodes at their idle time to form a massively parallel processing system to break tough encryption codes, which the same job can only be done currently by NSA in America using incredulously expensive Cray’s T3E, SV2 and X1 supercomputers.

The grand challenge is worthwhile because it help supports the “homeland security” concept. The project allows patriotic participants to do their part in allocating their idle computing cycles to break suspicious encrypted messages, and contributing an effort in safeguarding our nation.

The project also enables opportunists to gain theoretical and working knowledge in large-scale network computing, massively parallel processing, computer and network security, as well as applied cryptography.


Second Prize (Open): Modeling HIV Pathogenesis Dynamics through Multi-Agent Simulation

Submitted by: Tay Joc Cing
Description:

BACKGROUND

The human immune system consists of a wide range type of cells and molecules, which collectively function to protect us from a potentially infinite range of intruder types. Despite advances in immunology, we still lack a full understanding of the immune system. For example, we still do not have a consistent conclusion on how HIV infection leads to a collapse of the immune system resulting in AIDS. Besides laboratory experiments, researchers have therefore increasingly turned to mathematical and computational models in order to study immune responses under viral attack. Conventionally, viral pathogenesis dynamics are modeled by ordinary differential equations (ODEs). This approach can predict macroscopic averaging behaviors, but it lacks spatial and microscopic insights, which may contain crucial information with regards to disease progression.

THE CHALLENGE

We propose the challenge to simulate HIV pathogenesis through a multi-agent model. In contrast to ODE models, multi-agent model treat cells and molecules as ‘agents’ and let them freely interact with each other. The interactions include viral infection, cytokine secretion and reception, antigen presentation, antigen binding by immune cell receptors, macrophage ingestion, and many others within our knowledge. The simulation explores down to the level of cell-cell and cell-molecule interactions, from which macroscopic behaviors will emerge. By doing so we avoid directly making intuition-driven assumptions in macroscopic behaviors, which are commonly found in ODE models.

The simulation of Multi-agent models is more computationally expensive than ODE models. For the latter, system properties such as steady states, stability properties and threshold conditions can be analytically derived with just pen and paper. Computer simulation is usually for demonstration and confirmation purposes. Analyzing multi-agent model on the other hand, relies almost entirely on computer simulation. We do not expect any “analytical benchmark” for such simulations; if there were, it would contradict the intention of multi-agent models, that is, to deliberately avoid any direct interventions to any properties at macroscopic level because they are supposed to emerge from microscopic cell-cell and cell-molecule interactions.

The high computational demand raises the need of grid computing. Firstly, the number of autonomous agents (i.e., cells or molecules) is huge. For example, the CD4+ T cell count is 600 -1400/μl in a normal person. Even if we did proportionally scale down the system to a mini version, these agents inevitably consume considerable computational power. Secondly, since the model relies on simulation rather than analytical derivation, statistics need to be collected from tens to hundreds simulation runs before conclusions can be drawn.

THE BENEFIT

The benefit from multi-agent simulation of HIV pathogenesis dynamics is tremendous. It is cool because the agents are capable of autonomous and intelligent behavior, which lead to evolutionary and co-evolutionary phenomena. Visualizing them interacting in a 3-D graphical environment brings a whole new dimension to what is traditionally known as simulation. It implies the possibility of one day being able to expedite the search for vaccine and drug therapies through software simulation and viral pathogenesis prediction. This simulation tool potentially supports many problems in immunology, biology, intelligent agents and evolutionary theories.


Third Prize (Open): Simulation of Spread of Forest Fires

Submitted by: Terence Choo Cheng How
Description:

Forest fire disasters especially in E.Asia (Indonesia, East Kalimantan) are catastrophic to the balance of nature. There is a need to simulate the spreading of wild fire in different region as the scenario and conditions are complex. Using grid computing can shorten the computation and implement more complex situations/scenarios.

The specific aim of the application is to be able to accelerate the calculation of the simulated spread of fire in a complex plane. It utilizes the prediction theory based on Maxwell theorem to collate information gathered from the Grid. Partial information is also being considered based on the mathematical complex model which includes possible AI optimizer such as Genetic Algorithm. By harnessing the spare cycles of PCs and to efficiently deploy the application, more complex scenarios can be simulated. The complexity to the situation can include factors, such the wind speed, weather and geographical locality.

This challenge is cool as the participants can be very proud of the contribution to prevent fatal disasters.

The values are 1) enabling limited technology to become an outstanding useful supercomputer 2) to educate all walks of life the grave impact of uncontrolled disaster and help to provide free and significant information to countries for consideration.

Specific benefits to the general public in Singapore are improving the bilateral relation between both countries that can stabilize regional economy. This could value-add to the local and East Asia industrial investment and also contributed to the green ecosystem that provides healthier living environment.



 

  Copyright © 2003-2011 NG. All rights reserved