GridCoord d 1

Annex E - Italy

Short history of the Grid initiatives in Italy

The Grid research and technology activities have been developed along two main tracks that recently have been coordinated through the national research project Grid.it.

• 
  One line consists in research projects that originated in the context of high-performance computing and metacomputing. The National Research Council (CNR) plays a central role in this process, with the collaboration of several Universities and in cooperation with other research institutions and agencies, in particular the Italian Space Agency (ASI), ENEA and INFN, as well as industries;
  
• 
  The other line consists in projects led by INFN on the development of Grid infrastructures for e-science, in cooperation with CERN, European projects, Universities, as well as industries.
  

Research projects on high-performance computing, large-scale platforms and Grids (CNR, Universities, ASI)

The research line in Grid research originated in the 80s-90s in the context of CNR Special Programmes in Computer Science and Technologies, with a special emphasis on Parallel Computing and High Performance Computing (“Progetto Finalizzato Infomatica e Calcolo Parallelo”). An important role was played by the CNR institutes in Pisa (IEI, CNUCE, that recently joined in the ISTI institute), the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa, and by some CNR and University institutes in Naples, Cosenza, Rome, Perugia and others. In 1994 a special programme on Metacomputing for the solution of large-scale problems in engineering was proposed by CNR and a Metacomputing infrastructure was developed in the context of “Progetto Finalizzato Trasporti”, under the co-ordination of Domenico Laforenza.

The pioneering project in high-performance large-scale platforms in Italy has been the PQE2000 Project (1995-2000), led by CNR in collaboration with ENEA, INFN and Alenia Spazio. The scientific co-ordinator was Marco Vanneschi, Department of Computer Science, University of Pisa. A large set of results was achieved in large-scale platform infrastructures (MIMD+SIMD complexes installed at CNR in Naples) and in software technology (high-performance programming environments). From this collaboration originated the industrial company Quadrics Supercomputers World Ltd (QSW). The whole grant for PQE2000 was about 5 M€. PQE2000 acted also as a co-ordination point for several significant initiatives summarized in the following.

In 1997 the a Task Force of Ministry for University and Scientific and Technological Research (chaired by Prof. Sergio De Julio) developed the report on “High Performance Computing: Status and Perspectives” (co-ordinated by Marco Vanneschi), along with the proposal of a National Research Programme that contained many of the issues that, in 2000-2001, gave rise to the national projects in large-scale platforms and Grids.

A significant set of projects originated from the above-mentioned initiatives.

In 2001-2002 CNR funded two Agenzia 2000 projects in high-performance computing and Grid computing (grant: about 250 K€), led respectively by the University of Pisa (Marco Vanneschi) and by ICAR-CNR Naples (Almerico Murli).

In 2001-2002 ASI funded the ASI-PQE2000 Project on High-Performance Systems and Tools for Earth Observation Applications, co-ordinated by Giovanni Milillo (ASI) and Marco Vanneschi (University of Pisa), with the participation of some CNR and University departments (grant: about 600 K€). One of the results of this project was the first version of the high-performance programming environment ASSIST for parallel and distributed portable applications.

In 2002-2004 two projects, funded by MIUR (Legge 449/97), have been realized on “Grid Computing: enabling technologies and applications for e-science”, co-ordinated by Domenico Laforenza, and on “High-performance Large-scale Distributed Platform”, co-ordinated by Marco Vanneschi. The global grant was about 2 M€. Important results have been achieved in software technology, programming tools and environments (the first Grid-enabled version of ASSIST has been accomplished), knowledge-based and data-mining grid-aware tools, as well as in applications. In the context of the project on High-performance Large-scale Distributed Platform, ASI has demonstrated the feasibility and power of ASSIST in the development of a significant set of parallel and distributed Earth Observation applications, with the collaboration of the Universities of Bari, Lecce and of ISSIA-CNR Bari. Moreover, a Grid research infrastructure (SP3) has been realised.

All the projects mentioned till now and the ones originating from PQE2000 have played a fundamental role in the definition of competences, research skills, tools and environments ultimately leading to the establishment the national research project Grid.it (see below).

Moreover, CNR was the leading partner of the Research and Training Network for Mediterranean Countries, aimed at fostering a Grid-based access to learning and cultural resources within the Mediterranean Countries. CNR participated with the CED, IIT and IAC institutes.

Projects on Grid infrastructures (INFN, PON)

These activities started in February 2000 with the approval of the INFN Grid project, under the coordination of Mirco Mazzucato (INFN, Padova), aimed at the development of the middleware and the Italian Computational Infrastructure for the CERN Large Hadron Collider Experiments (30 M€), and the R&D programme on Grid technology of the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Study of the University of Lecce, supported by the Ministry of Research and Education (MIUR) funds. IT Industries like Datamat SpA and Nice SRL established since then an early and fruitful collaboration with INFN in Grid middleware development. Several partners from Universities, CNR and other research centres participated in the INFN initiatives through applications on e-science fields, such as bioinformatics, geophysics, and astronomy.

In the following years two MIUR programmes, the FIRB (Funds for Investment on Basic Research) and PON (National Operational Programme 2000-2006), included Grid as a possible R&D topic and allowed the funding of a series of national grid projects such as Grid.it, EGRID, S-PACI, the Inter-department Grid of the University of Naples and other minor Grid. The total cost is 60 M€ and the MIUR grant is ~50M€.

A first level of bottom up coordination between Institutions and Industries interested in Grid developments was established in early 2003 by the IG-BIGEST (Italian Grid for e-Business, e-Industry e-Government and e-Science & Technology) initiative, co-ordinated by INFN. The initiative involves all major National Research Institutions, Universities and Computing Centres, as well as many industries, ready to cope with a pioneering effort in the experimental utilization and application of grid technologies.

Links to International and EU activities

The major participations in FP5 include:

• 
  European Data Grid (EDG)
  
• 
  DataTAG
  
• 
  Cross Grid
  
• 
  e-Learning
  

Among the Grid related FP6 funded projects, the largest participation is in EGEE, co-ordinated by CERN, which aims at the development of an e-Infrastructure for Science in Europe, and involves 26 countries, 70 European Institutions and 3 US ones.

In FP6 Italy has a major role in DEISA, CoreGrid and e-Legi and co-ordinates several new projects:

• 
  Diligent (6 M€) co-ordinated by ISTI-CNR
  
• 
  Gridcc (4 M€) co-ordinated by INFN
  
• 
  GridCoord co-ordinated by the University of Pisa
  

Italy is actively taking part in the activities of the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group (eIRG) together with the other members appointed by the EU Science Ministers. Italy been a promoter of the Global Grid Forum, is contributing to several working groups and hosted in Rome/Frascati one of the first events.

At international level a joint collaboration with Globus and Condor, lasting since 1999, has brought, between other achievements, to the development of the Global Laboratory Universal Environment (GLUE) schema, the current GGF “standard” to describe Computing and Storage Resources and is now continuing to reach a complete specification of an interface to Computing Resources and in the domain of the information systems.

A joined effort with DataTAG and the US project iVDGL has led to the development of an interoperable test-bed between the EDG and the US grids which was demonstrated at SC2002 and IST2002. Within the EGRID project Italy is collaborating with the University of Caltech to develop specific grid tool for finance.