Cloud Computing Research Gets A Boost From HP, Intel And Yahoo!

29 July 2008

TMC Net

Section: News

By: Rajani Baburaian

HP, Intel (News - Alert) and Yahoo! today jointly unveiled a global, multi-data center, open source test bed to encourage research and education on cloud computing.

The aim of the Cloud Computing Test Bed is to promote open collaboration among industry, academia and governments. The initiative will facilitate a globally distributed Internet-scale testing environment to encourage research on software, data center management and hardware issues associated with cloud computing. The test bed will also support research of cloud applications and services, said the companies.
 
The new research initiative includes worldwide partnerships from a number of organizations including Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA (News - Alert)), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (along with the National Science Foundation), and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany.
 
There will be six “centers of excellence,” each of which will host a cloud computing infrastructure with 1,000 to 4,000 processor cores to support data-intensive research on cloud computing, said the consortium. The six centers are IDA, Singapore; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the Steinbuch Center for Computing of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; HP Labs; Intel Research and Yahoo!. These centers will be made accessible to researchers worldwide later this year.
 
Yahoo! will offer its technical leadership in open source projects to the Cloud Computing Test Bed. Yahoo! previously ran two open source projects, namely Apache Hadoop of the Apache Software Foundations and Pig - a parallel programming language developed by Yahoo! Research.
 
“The HP, Intel and Yahoo! Cloud Computing Test Bed furthers our commitment to the global, collaborative research community that is advancing the new sciences of the Internet,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research.
 
According to Raghavan, the new test bed will enable researchers to test applications at Internet scale, and it will give them access to the core computing systems to understand how systems software and hardware function in a cloud environment.
 
HP Labs will use the test bed to conduct advanced research in intelligent infrastructure and dynamic cloud services, the company said. Cloud computing is the driving force behind HP’s vision of “Everything as a Service.”
 
“To realize the full potential of cloud computing, the technology industry must think about the cloud as a platform for creating new services and experiences,” said Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of Research at HP and director of HP Labs.
 
“This requires an entirely new approach to the way we design, deploy and manage cloud infrastructure and services. The HP, Intel and Yahoo! Cloud Computing Test Bed lets us tap the brightest minds in the industry, academia and government to drive innovation in this area,” continued Banerjee.
 
Intel will serve as the platform technology provider for cloud computing data centers, according to the company. Intel will provide its processors, chipsets, networking and solid state drives (SSDs) required for the cloud test bed centers.
 
“We are pleased to engage with the academic research community -- open collaboration with the academia is in our DNA at Intel Research,” said Andrew Chien, vice president and director of Intel Research.
 
“Creating large-scale test beds is important because they lower barriers to innovation and provide the opportunity to experiment and learn at scale. Intel's support of Tashi, an open source cluster management system for cloud computing, and this HP, Intel, Yahoo! Cloud Computing Test Bed are a natural extension of our ongoing, mutually beneficial partnerships with the research community, such as the Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers,” added Chien.
 
IDA said it would offer computing resources required to develop cloud computing software and applications. It would also take initiatives to train local students and professionals on various cloud computing technologies.
 
Khoong Hock Yun, assistant chief executive of the Infrastructure Development Group at the IDA, Singapore, said, “With the ready and available Internet-scale resources in Singapore to support cloud computer research and development work, we can collaborate with like-minded partners to advance the field.”
 
“Cloud computing is considered by many to be the next paradigm shift in computer technology, and this may be the next “platform” for innovative ecosystems. Partnerships like this will allow Singapore to leverage this new paradigm for greater economic and social growth,” added Yun.
The Cloud Computing Test Bed is part of the ongoing initiatives of the participating companies to advancements in cloud computing.

Technology Marketing Corp. 1997-2008 Copyright.