Grid Computing for Commercial Applications

This Phase I project will demonstrate a virtual computer environment that links geographically dispersed computer systems over the Internet to solve large computational problems. Ultimately, the technology will deliver compute power from dedicated sources, over the Internet, on-demand, creating a business paradigm where companies can concentrate on their core competencies, and rely on other entities to provide context technologies which are critical to business success, but which can potentially detract from the primary business objective. The ultimate goal of this paradigm (and the Phase II project) is that cpu cycles will be a commodity purchased by end users, much like electric power. Companies and Government Agencies (such as NASA) engaged in scientific computing will not be burdened with the concerns of system architecture, system maintenance, backups, and other issues associated with high performance computing. The only concern will be how many teraflops are required to solve a given problem. Once that is estimated, the teraflops of compute power can be purchased over the Internet, much like kilowatts of electric energy are purchased over the power grid. The Phase I project will implement and demonstrate an earth science computing application over the Internet on a large-scale (100 to 1000 cpu) system.