By SYLVIE ALVAREZ
An emerging technology called the grid may soon add a problem solving capacity to the existing Internet and World Wide Web.
The technology of the Internet and the Web allows users to access or to exchange information, but does not allow users to generate new information.
The idea of the grid is to create a virtual supercomputer or a network of supercomputers that would allow users to have access to additional memory and computing capacities.
Last winter, Ira and Mary Lou Fulton donated to BYU “two of the fastest supercomputers in American higher education,” according to the Ira and Mary Lou Fulton Supercomputing Center Web site. These supercomputers are an essential resource for scientific projects that demand enormous computing power.
Mark Clement, an associate professor in the Computer Science Department, said that BYU’s supercomputing technology ranks among the top 10 universities in the United States.
The supercomputing laboratory works on several projects, like the BYU Center for Remote Sensing. The center seeks to coordinate research and academic activities that involve different departments and laboratories at BYU.
Another important project the supercomputing laboratory is involved with is a NASA project to help with climate studies. Other projects include work on industrial design.
The grid enhances the power of the supercomputers. It aims to simultaneously coordinate several tasks using all the available resources in order to obtain faster results.
For example, emptying a pitcher of water with ten glasses would be much faster than emptying a pitcher of water using only one glass, explained Marcelo Ontiveros, a masters student who has researched the grid. The grid operates by the same principle.
“The grid is a coordination system,” Ontiveros said. “Computers have limited resources, but the grid will combine all the resources together for the best outcome.”
To develop the grid, a new set of software must be put in place. BYU has worked to develop some of this type of software.
“We actually have a system that we have used that is called DOGMA, and it is kind of a grid type application,” Clement said.
This application allows someone to run different types of analyses in the supercomputers and to use the open computer lab machines, Clement said. This allows researchers to take advantage of all the resources available on campus, Clement added.
“The problem is that if I just spent $20 million dollars or something on a supercomputer, although I may not use it all the time, I have little motivation to offer those cycles to somebody else,” Clement said. “I really don’t want to face the security problems or be sure that they are not going to screw something up by letting somebody else use it.”
Rajkumar Buyya, a lecturer from the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne, also addressed those problems on his Web site.
“There is enormous concern about data and application security both during its flow across the Internet and also when staged on the grid resource,” Rajkumar said. “The first concern is mainly because it is possible for someone to tap your data and possibly modify it on its path. The second concern is that when you use others computers in the grid, it is possible that the owners of those computers may read your data.”
Rajkumar explained that those problems can be addressed by sophisticated encryption techniques, though technical problems will not be solved overnight. The public will not have immediate free access to the grid.
“The idea is that instead of there being a handful of scientists that have access to this, that it will become more generally available for everybody,” Clement said.
