GridCoord d 1

Short History

In Austria, there had been no coordinated national funding of Grid projects until 2003. Furthermore, Austria had been the one and only European Union country which did not actively participate in any EU Grid project. So far the only Grid Computing activities had been done by groups at universities only using their basic equipment.

The participation of GUP, Univ. Linz within the consortium of the EU CrossGrid project marks the first contribution of an Austrian research group to a European Union funded Grid project. In this project GUP developed the Grid Visualisation Kernel GVK and well-known Tool glogin.

The majority of Grid Computing activities were and are based on the efforts of the Austrian Centre for Parallel Computation (ACPC) under the spokesman Prof. Dr. Jens Volkert (GUP, Univ. Linz). Since Grid computing is often considered as the logical evolution of parallel and distributed computing, the groups combined in the ACPC represented the logical basis for a Grid computing initiative in Austria. As the national awareness about the importance and necessity of Grid computing had been continually increased over the last few years, people from ACPC - the later project management Prof. Jens Volkert (GUP, Univ. Linz), Prof. Bruno Buchberger (RISC, Univ. Linz), and Prof. Dietmar Kuhn (HEP, Univ. Innsbruck) - started to assemble the AUSTRIAN GRID consortium and initiated corresponding negotiations with the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. A first version of the proposal has been delivered in December 2001.

In December 2003, the Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development recommended the proposal of the consortium for funding. In April 2004, the project AUSTRIAN GRID started. For the first phase, it is provided with a budget of 2.7 M€ by the BM:BWK.

Research lines and approaches

The only national Austrian initiative dealing with Grid Computing is the AUSTRIAN GRID. Nearly all people interested and active in Grid research are integrated in it. Therefore it represents the entire Grid research community in Austria.

This project aims at the

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  development and usage of grid computing infrastructures for diverse application areas, and the
  
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  installation and operation of a national grid testbed in Austria.
  

It is divided into three layers. In the infrastructure layer, Hardware and Infrastructure Services are investigated.

Some fundamental aspects related to middleware are studied the middleware layer:

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  Security and Authentication
  
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  Visualization and Interfaces
  
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  Multimedia and Compression
  
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  Databases, Data Mining and Data Retrieval
  
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  Programming Paradigms and Methods for the GRID
  
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  Mobility Support in the GRID
  

One aim of Austrian Grid is the usage of grid computing infrastructures for diverse application areas. Consequently, in the scope of the Application Layer several applications relevant for Austria are developed in the following fields:

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  Medical Sciences
  
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  High-Energy Physics
  
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  Applied Numerical Simulation
  
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  Astrophysical Simulations and Solar Observations
  
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  Meteorology Simulations
  
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  Environmental GRID Applications
  

In nearly any case high performance is addressed.

In summary, the AUSTRIAN GRID initiative focuses on the development of high-level Grid middleware extensions and the development of Grid applications with attention to scientific domains of particular interest to Austria.

The AUSTRIAN GRID project is in many aspects a follow-up of the EU CrossGrid project. Grid middleware services developed in CrossGrid, e.g. the Grid Visualization Kernel GVK and glogin, will be continued and extended in the AUSTRIAN GRID initiative.

The AUSTRIAN GRID initiative is a partner of the Central European Grid Consortium (CEGC), and regularly participates to meetings for driving and coordinating the Grid activities in Central Europe. The spokesperson of Austria in the CEGC is Prof. Dieter Kranzlmüller.

In addition, the AUSTRIAN GRID project intends to be compatible to the EU EGEE Project in terms of basic middleware, training and education, and dissemination activities. Two main partners of the AUSTRIAN GRID are contributors to the EU EGEE project: GUP, Univ. Linz and DPS, Univ. Innsbruck. Partner GUP, Univ. Linz provides the permanent representative of the EGEE Project Management Board (Prof. Dieter Kranzlmüller) and the Administrative Federation Office (AFM) for the Central European federation. Prof. Dieter Kranzlmüller is the current EGEE Project Director Deputy.

Furthermore, the AUSTRIAN GRID supplies the representatives of the European Union eIRG (e-Infrastructures Reflection Group) upon request of the BM:BWK to contribute on European wide Grid policies. The current representative of Austria in eIRG is Prof. Dieter Kranzlmüller, with Prof. Jens Volkert as alternate.

Funding Structure and Co-ordination

As far as Austria is concerned, two ministries are responsible for funding of larger Grid-related projects. BM:BWK supports research projects submitted by universities, e.g. Austrian Grid, and BMVIT (Federal Ministry of Traffic, Innovation and Technology) non-university research projects. In any case each proposal for a larger project has to be accepted by the Austrian Council of Research and Technology.

This committee agreed in the realization of AUSTRIAN GRID under condition that this initiative supports Grid computing in Austria in general, and provides co-ordination and collaboration between research areas interested in grid computing.

Therefore the initiative is open to new participants, with possibilities for funding available for the second phase of the project. The proposal for phase 2 is currently being developed. Prospective partners are invited to contact Prof. Jens Volkert at [e-mail].

Besides scientists people from industry and business are asked for partition. Increased focus on these perspectives will be given during the second phase of the AUSTRIAN GRID initiative.

The AUSTRIAN GRID initiative is intended to cover the entire Grid computing landscape of Austria. Additionally, the AUSTRIAN GRID initiative intends to establish

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  a platform for discussion of future grids in Austria
  
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  a stepping stone for intended future international and European Union projects, and
  
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  a contact institution for future partners interested in every aspect of grid computing.
  

In terms of infrastructure, the AUSTRIAN GRID currently provides members with a dedicated AUSTRIAN GRID computing environment, based on the SGI Altix architecture distributed over three locations in Austria (Linz, Innsbruck, Salzburg). Furthermore there are several clusters integrated.

The co-ordination of the AUSTRIAN GRID project is performed by the management board: Prof. Dr. Jens Volkert (Project Coordinator), Prof. Bruno Buchberger, and Prof. Dietmar Kuhn. The executive committee is comprised of Prof. Dieter Kranzlmüller (GUP, Univ. Linz), Prof. Wolfgang Schreiner (RISC, Univ. Linz), and Prof. Thomas Fahringer (DPS, Univ. Innsbruck).

More information about Austrian Grid is available at http://www.austriangrid.at/.