GridCoord d 1

Annex: current projects and efforts

Current total effort in the Italian Grid Technology Platform Initiative (number of person-months involved): ~4000.

The Grid Technological Platform Initiative encompasses the activity of the following projects:

• 
  MIUR-FIRB Grid.it: 266 people (equivalent to 793 person-months)
  
• 
  INFN Grid: 130 people (equivalent to 360 person-months/year x 7 years. 2160 person-months)
  
• 
  Egrid: 10 people (equivalent to 330 person-month)
  
• 
  S-PACI: 20 people (equivalent to 330 person-month)
  
• 
  Biology Laboratory (7 M€ Bid closed. Proposals being evaluated).
  
• 
  The Inter-Department Grid of Naples
  

List of projects

Annex F - The Netherlands

Short history of Grid initiatives

The Netherlands was responsible for organizing the first Global Grid Forum meeting in Amsterdam. This illustrates the importance that was given in the scientific community towards this technology.

It originates from the situation that networking and networking research have always been high on the Dutch research agenda. For networking a separate organization was set up in the Netherlands. This national networking organization SURF has recently obtained funding for an innovative lambda networking infrastructure, Surfnet6, this being the 6th generation networking infrastructure in the Netherlands. Experience has shown that while grid research makes demands on networking technology driving research in that area, the provision of advanced networking infrastructure can in turn drive grid research by enabling new possibilities.

In addition ASCI the Dutch graduate school of advanced computing and imaging established in 1993 and accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences took the initiative to realise a distributed computer infrastructure for research into parallel and distributed systems called Distributed ASCI Supercomputer (DAS), the third generation of which was recently awarded funding. Research groups from Delft University of Technology, Vrije Universiteit, University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, University Utrecht, University of Twente, University of Groningen and Eindhoven Technical University participate in ASCI.

The Scientific and Technology Centre Watergraafsmeer (WTCW) in Amsterdam, comprising amongst others the University of Amsterdam (Institute for Informatics as well as Biology), the National Institute of Nuclear and High Energy physics (NIKHEF), the latter with connections to CERN, and the Dutch Computer Centre SARA, took the initiative to start a number of application-oriented Grid initiatives in the Netherlands for which the second generation so-called Virtual Laboratory for e-Science (VL-e) was recently funded. In this project, networking, distributed computing and Grid researchers collaborate, together with applied scientists from both governmental and industrial research.

In addition the National Computer Infrastructure Foundation (NCF) of the National Scientific Research Organization (NWO) has recently started a small Grid-based project and has integrated Grid into their general computer infrastructure policy plan. In addition the exact science section of NWO has run a number of computational programmes with strong emphasis on computer infrastructure for parallel applications and has recently adopted e-Science as part of its research agenda.

The LOFAR project aims at the development of a new generation, large-scale, wide-area array of sensors for radio astronomy with applications not only in astrophysics and space physics, but also in geophysics, water management and agriculture. It heavily relies on a fast networking and computing Grid infrastructure. Its targets are not to do Grid research per se but to apply it when and where possible.

Informal view of research lines

The ASCI DAS project is a purely computer science project with an emphasis on research in parallel and distributed systems, parallel algorithms, operating systems and visualization among others.

The VL-e project concentrates on application and application-driven computer and computational science research. The philosophy is to develop e-Science generic methodology along the total technology chain where the applications are the drivers of the research. It makes a distinction between a rapid-prototyping environment where new research ideas can be quickly evaluated and a proof-of-concept environment where application cases can be developed and that should be the basis for a later roll-out of Grid technology.

The Grid research being undertaken includes parallelization of algorithms, management of data and information (based on ontologies), text and data mining, dynamic workflow automation, interactive computational steering, problem solving environments, high performance and high throughput computing.

In addition the Dutch bioinformatics initiative BioRange closely collaborates with VL-e in the research as well as the proof of concept for bio-informatics toolboxes. The national research foundation has recently brought e-Science into their research agenda partly via the research programme NOAG-ICT of the computer science community as a general programme with more emphasis on applications.

Funding structures and coordination

The Netherlands recently established a coordination body for ICT at large. It is not clear at this moment in time what its role will be. However, in the long run NWO and governmental funding of ICT will be co-ordinated.

Public funding of Grid research in the Netherlands is relatively centralised. The principal source of funding is directly from government ministries. The Dutch government has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to the e-Europe plan and its intention to play a leading role by going beyond that plan to the development of a knowledge-based economy.

The Resolution for Grant Investment in Knowledge Infrastructure (Bsik) is a collective initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs together with the Ministries of Education, Culture & Science, Transport, Public Works & Water Management, Agriculture, Nature & Food Quality, Housing, Spatial Planning & the Environment, and Finance. The interministerial working group for the strengthening of the Dutch knowledge infrastructure has been in existence under the title ICES/KIS since 1994. Bsik is the third impulse of this programme. Bsik funds 50% of the costs for each project accepted.

The goal of the Bsik grants is to bolster the research capacity and applicable knowledge in the Netherlands in five categories, one of which is Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Following a tender in 2003, the government approved financing for 37 projects to the sum of 800 M€. These projects have in common that they are innovative and important for the international competitiveness of the Netherlands through building a strong and dynamic knowledge economy.

Of these 37 projects, nine are in ICT; these have been financed to the amount of 163 M€. Three of these projects are directly Grid-driven: GigaPort Next Generation (40 M€), VL-e (20 M€) and LOFAR (52 M€). In addition NWO will be funding Grid-oriented research for applications in, among others, Astrophysics, High Energy physics, Water management and Life sciences.

The Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) provides funding through the independent Netherlands National Computer Facilities Foundation (NCF). In the period 2004–2006, NCF will invest of the order of 2.8 M€ in scientific grid infrastructure. This investment will be made in line with the available supercomputer facilities and the current investment policy in high-end computing. In particular, NCF has integrated Grid in their general computer infrastructure policy plan.

DutchGrid is the platform for Grid Computing and Technology in the Netherlands. Open to all institutions for research and test-bed activities, the goal of DutchGrid is to coordinate the various deployment efforts and to offer a forum for the sharing of experiences on Grid technologies.

Next to the DutchGrid Platform, the Grid Forum Netherlands association has been established to promote the Grid in the Netherlands at all levels. Its goal is to bring together the expertise and innovative power of Dutch grid experts, businesses, government, academia and other stakeholders. By creating a focal point for Grid technology in the Netherlands it aims to make knowledge about this breakthrough technology available to Dutch society. Some participants in these organisations took the initiative to establish a new grid infrastructure in the Netherlands called NL++ Grid.

The funding for networking research as well as for the network itself is provided by SurfNet, comprising the Dutch universities as well as by a grant from Bsik for the proposal GigaPort-Next Generation which covers 50% of the total cost. The co-ordination is done by various bodies governing the Surf organisation.

The VL-e project with contributions from various public and private partners is also 50% funded by a grant from Bsik. It has a board of directors and a supervisory board consisting of the board of trustees of WTCW.

LOFAR is funded by various universities and NWO with a 50% contribution from Bsik. It is governed by the astronomy institute ASTRON of NWO as well as by various application-oriented collaborations at Dutch universities.

DAS is an NWO funded project with small contribution from collaborating universities. It is governed by a body of members of the research school ASCI. Grid-related projects involved in DAS include MultimediaN, which investigates multimedia grid services for, among others, video stream processing, content-based search and semantic classification; and PROGRES, a prediction framework for grids, resources and services.

NCF also funds infrastructure that can be used to enable Grid based application research. It is governed by a small committee allocating the funds which are mainly consumed by the Dutch Computer Institute SARA.

VL-e and LOFAR are the only Grid projects with participation from industrial research partners. In VL-e this participation comprises the middleware industry (IBM), service-providing industries (IBM, Logica/CMG) as well as end-user industries (Philips research and Philips medical, Unilever and DSM research as well as FEI, an Electron Microscope provider). LOFAR has IBM as its most important computing partner.

In addition a Dutch Grid society was recently established which has more industrial parties as its members.