November 2005

Open Science Grid technology and applications featured at SC|05

The Open Science Grid, a nationwide community grid built by research groups from United States universities and national laboratories, will showcase advanced grid technologies and innovative scientific applications at SC|05, the premier international conference on high performance computing, networking and storage.

Presentations and demonstrations at 13 booths will show how scientists from diverse fields contribute manpower and resources to the OSG and benefit from easy access to local and remote resources, testing and production environments for middleware and applications, and a common computing infrastructure. Over 20 member organizations representing more than 50 institutions and hundreds of researchers contribute to the OSG and benefit from access to shared resources worldwide, including over 10,000 CPUs and many terabytes of data storage.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center exhibit, Booth 302, is dedicated to the OSG as well as the high-performance networking, computing and scientific advances from the two national laboratories. OSG-related demonstrations and presentations at SC|05 will include:

Astronomy and astrophysics: Sloan Digital Sky Survey astronomers are running several applications on the OSG, including a search for near Earth objects and the processing of tens of thousands of spectra to determine the properties of quasars. LIGO physicists use the OSG to search for gravitational waves from the binary inspiral of neutron star systems.
Physics: The CMS experiment uses the OSG for computing and data-intensive particle physics simulations, and will use the grid for data analysis when the Large Hadron Collider begins operating at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. OSG collaborators from the CMS and ATLAS experiments participated in the LHC Service Challenges, which earlier this year sustained a continuous data flow of 600 MB/s on average for 10 days from CERN to sites worldwide. Particle and nuclear physics experiments use grid technology to simulate, process and transfer data in their search for the nature of matter and energy.
Biology: OSG resources are used for genome analysis at Argonne National Laboratory, and for bioinformatics and biology through the Grid Resources for Advanced Science and Engineering (GRASE) VO at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Bandwidth Challenge: OSG collaborators will participate in the SC|05 Bandwidth Challenge, aiming to transfer data internationally at a higher rate than ever before.
Grid technology: OSG collaborators have advanced many areas of grid technology. Demonstrations will highlight research in the areas of security, storage, data distribution, collaboration, networking and monitoring.
Interoperability: OSG collaborators successfully running jobs on multiple grid infrastructures, including the OSG, the TeraGrid, the LHC Computing Grid, the ACDC Grid and the Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin, will demonstrate this interoperability at several SC|05 exhibits.
Education: The QuarkNet cosmic ray study uses grid tools and techniques in a model problem-based, student-driven and technology-dependent student investigation. QuarkNet collaborators will demonstrate how high school students reach beyond classroom walls to explore data with other students and experts and share results, publishing original work to a worldwide audience.

The research and accomplishments of the OSG collaboration will be featured at the following SC|05 exhibits: Argonne National Laboratory (Booth 1629); Brookhaven National Laboratory (2238); Caltech, Center for Advanced Computing Research (428); Center for Computational Research, University at Buffalo (459); Fermilab/SLAC (302); Indiana University (202); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1828); National Center for Supercomputing Applications (1639); Purdue University (206); Texas Tech University, HPCC (2162); University of Florida (6319); University of Iowa (128); and Vanderbilt University (6013).

SC|05 takes place November 12-18 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle.

The Open Science Grid makes innovative science possible by bringing multidisciplinary collaborations together with the latest advances in distributed computing technologies. This shared cyberinfrastructure, built by research groups from U.S. universities and national laboratories, includes over 10,000 CPUs and many terabytes of data storage. The OSG receives support from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more information about the OSG, visit www.opensciencegrid.org.