Computational and data grids - are they important?

by Paul Messina (ASCI)

Tuesday 18 Jan 2000, 11:00 → 14:00 Europe/Zurich

40-SS-D01 (CERN)

During 1999 it has become fashionable to talk about computational and data grids. Sceptical audiences might wonder whether this renaming of 'distributed systems' is merely a passing fashion or represents something more fundamentals. The speaker will argue that a fundamental change has indeed started. It is driven by the recognition that reliable high bandwidth wide-area networking has become generally available - an 'always-on' service - and that the quality and speeds available will continue to grow fast over the next few years. This permits communities to think of sharing computational tasks and access to data (at many different scales) in fundamentally new ways. While 'the grids' will not replace all current modes of computing, they will enable new applications as well as enhance many current ones. The speaker will review several different grid initiatives and discuss the importance both of the quality of the network infrastructure and the way in which the scientific databases are structured. About the speaker: Dr. Paul Messina currently heads the Department of Energy's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), which is concerned with developing the simulation capabilities needed to analyse and predict the performance, safety, and reliability of nuclear weapons and certify their functionality. At the DoE he is on leave from Caltech, where he is Assistant VP for Scientific Computing and Director of the Centre for Advanced Computing Research. His research interests include advanced computer architectures, especially their application to large-scale computations in science and engineering and high-speed networks and computer performance evaluation.

Note: * Please notes the unusual room