Speaker
Prof.
Thomas Fahringer
(Institute of Computer Science, University of Innsbruck)
Description
Edutain@Grid is an exciting and ground breaking new project making use of Grid
technology. The project will identify and define a new class of applications that are
highly significant for Grid computing but have not been studied in the past, which we
characterise as Real-Time Online Interactive Applications (ROIA). The distinctive
features that make ROIA unique include large user concurrency to a single application
instance, ad-hoc connections, competition-oriented Virtual Organisations, real-time
interactive response, dynamically changing control and data application flows whilst
maintaining high Quality of Service (QoS), user friendly security, and novel
Business-to-Consumer market models. In order to overcome these challenges, the
project team will develop a new middleware layer that will allow ROIA to exploit Grid
computing and validate the system using two pilot applications from online gaming and
e-learning domains. Edutain@Grid is expected to be of key interest to game developers
and publishing companies by tackling some current key industry challenges: (1) larger
user concurrency and high QoS ranging between 64128 players for fast action online
games to thousand of players in persistent Massively Multi-user Online Role Playing
Games (MMORPG); (2) standard API and scalable networks for cheaper integration and
online game hosting.
Similarly the benefits to the e-learning community are expected to be significant
where large numbers of geographically disparate students can interact with
instructors making use of large operational data sets. In particular this will be
relevant to online simulations in scientific modelling applications used in the
energy, defence, transport and legal market sectors. Furthermore Edutain@Grid is
expected to attract new developers and development ideas that were not previously
possible or simply cost prohibitive.
Summary
Project acronym: Edutain@Grid
Project full title: A Scalable QoS-enabled Business Grid Environment for Multi-User
Real-time Online Interactive Applications
Contract no.: IST 034601
Authors
Dr
Radu Prodan
(Institute of Computer Science, University of Innsbruck)
Prof.
Thomas Fahringer
(Institute of Computer Science, University of Innsbruck)
