National Grid Seminar Series

Application Development for Grids

Prof. Lennart Johnsson
Cullen Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Mathematics and Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of Houston

02 October 2006 (Monday)
1600 hrs @ The Big One, Level 1
Institute for Infocomm Research
21, Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Singapore 119613

Abstract

The rapidly increasing capabilities of networks enable the construction of wide-area integrated environments for collaboration and sharing of instruments, data, and computational and storage resources. We will briefly present the needs of some of the science application drivers, some current Grid infrastructure developments, and some of our own research in support of developing applications that can efficiently use the heterogeneous, dynamic environments that constitutes these future environments. Specifically we will present the approach taken in the Virtual Grids Application Development Software effort with particular emphasis on architecture and application adaptive software libraries.

Biodata

Dr. Johnsson implemented one of the first commercial strength sparse-matrix packages, and led the development of systems for real-time supervision, control, and optimization of electric utility network operations, and for industrial process control at ASEA (now ABB). At Caltech, Dr. Johnsson in collaboration with Dr. Fornberg introduced one of the first courses in the country on large-scale scientific and engineering computation on scalable architectures and worked with Drs Charles Seitz and Geoffrey Fox on the COSMIC cube project that came to serve as a prototype for the Intel iPSC platfomrs. Revisions of the Caltech course were later introduced by Dr Johnsson at Yale University and Harvard University.

At Thinking Machines Corp., Dr. Johnsson led the design, development, and maintenance of the Connection Machine Scientific Software Library (CMSSL) and part of the Connection Machine Run-Time System (CMRTS). The CMSSL included several novel features, such as algorithm selection at run-time, and multiple-instance functionality for consistency with languages with array syntax. Some of the results of Dr. Johnsson’s research on network routing and collective communication operations common in applications influenced the definition of the primitives in the MPI standard, and heavily influenced the Connection Machine Run-Time System. At the University of Houston Dr. Johnsson jointly with Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine established the Texas GigaPoP and was responsible for the first MPI applications for Globus demonstrated at SC97. Currently Dr Johnsson is leading the effort to establish the Research and Education Network of Houston (RENoH) that will provide high-speed network connectivity between University of Houston, Rice, the Texas Medical Center, the Lonestar Education and Research Network of the State of Texas, NLR and Internet2. Dr. Johnsson is also engaged in the Texas Internet Grid for Research and Education (TIGRE), the Virtual Grid Applications Development Software (VGrADS) project, the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute, and the European EGEE, NextGrid, Baltic Grid, ICEAGE and SweGrid projects. Dr. Johnsson is a Cullen Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Houston, a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Communications at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Rice University.

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This seminar series is organized by the National Grid Office.

Admission is Free. All are Welcome.
Please click here to register by 1500 hours on 29 September 2006.