Project no: IST-2003-511618
GridCoord
ERA Pilot on a co-ordinated Europe-wide Initiative in Grid Research
Instrument: Specific Support Action (SSA)
Sixth Framework Programme – Priority 2 - IST
Deliverable D.3.1.1
Survey of Funding Bodies and Industry
Due Date: 31 March 2005
Actual first submission date: 28.06.2005
Start date of project: 1st July 2004 Duration: 24 months
Lead contractor: Marco Vanneschi
Organisation name: Università di Pisa, Italy Revision: V.2.0 - 20.10.2005
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006)
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Dissemination Level
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PU
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Public
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Yes
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PP
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Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services)
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RE
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Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services)
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CO
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Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services)
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
Analysis 5
Historical overview of Grid Research in GridCoord Countries 5
Grid Initiatives and Research Directions 7
Funding Summary 13
Member States Strategy and co-ordination 16
Industry and Business Involvement 17
Conclusion 19
Annex A - Austria 20
Short History 20
Research lines and approaches 20
Funding Structure and Co-ordination 21
Annex: current projects 21
Annex B - France 22
Short history of the Grid initiatives in the past 22
Research lines or approaches to the past or current initiatives 23
Funding structure and co-ordination 24
Annex: Tables of current projects for the French GRID 5000 Testbed 26
Annex C - Germany 29
History 29
Research Focus in the Past and Current 29
Funding Structure and Coordination 29
Recommendations 31
Annex: Projects 31
Annex D - Hungary 33
Short History 33
Research initiatives and approaches 33
Funding Structure and Co-ordination 34
Links to International and EU activities 35
Links to Industry and Business 36
Future Activities 37
Annex: Projects 37
Annex E - Italy 38
Short history of the Grid initiatives in Italy 38
Research lines and approaches to past and current initiatives 40
Funding structure and coordination 42
Annex: current projects and efforts 43
Annex F - The Netherlands 45
Short history of Grid initiatives 45
Informal view of research lines 45
Funding structures and coordination 46
Annex: current projects 47
Annex G - Poland 48
Short history 48
Research lines and approaches – past and current 48
Funding Structure and Co-ordination 49
Links to International and EU activities 50
Links to Industry and Business 50
Future Activities 50
Annex: Projects 50
Annex H - Spain 52
Short History 52
Future Initiatives 53
Funding Structure and Co-ordination 53
Annex - Current Projects and Investment 55
Annex I - Sweden 58
Short history 58
Research lines and approaches – past and current 58
Funding Structure and Co-ordination 58
Annex: Projects 59
Annex J - United Kingdom 60
History 60
Research Approach 60
Funding Structure and Coordination 62
Future Activities 64
Annex 64
Annex K - Grids in Industry 69
Assessment 69
Usage of and demand for Grids 69
Perspectives 70
Summary 70
Executive Summary
The first objective of the GridCoord project is to strengthen co-operation amongst the funding authorities in order to better co-ordinate the planning of future activities in the field of Grid research, an ERA objective. This GridCoord report contains a compendium of national Grid R&D initiatives in Europe, with special emphasis on the structures, initiatives and coordination actions at the level of funding bodies. This analysis is related to the recent and current projects on Grid Computing and to the possible industrial impact of this technology. The study builds on contributions from GridCoord partners in an attempt to define and size the present and future Grid computing space in the nine GridCoord countries. The study further includes findings from a workshop on Grid activities in European industry that was held at Stuttgart/Germany March 7-8, 2005 (Task 4.1.1) in order to better understand the usage of Grid in industry and its connection with publicly funded research.
The document contains a chapter for each country that is represented by partners in the GridCoord project. Each chapter is organized as follows:
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Short history of the Grid initiatives
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Research initiatives and approaches
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Funding structure and contacts
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Table summarizing current projects and efforts.
The report shows that the European countries have a prestigious research tradition in the areas that contributed “to build” the Grid technology - high-performance computing, parallel and distributed processing, networking infrastructures, software engineering in objects/components platforms, data base and knowledge discovery, cooperative computing, peer-to-peer computing -, as well as in the scientific application sectors: computational physics, high-energy physics, computational chemistry, life sciences, genomics, medicine, astrophysics, geophysics, earth observation systems, weather prediction, astrobiology, while some significant industrial and commercial applications are emerging.
In the second half of the 90s / at the beginning of 2000s, some important initiatives have been started, notably UK e-Science, ACI Grid and Grid 5000 in France, Unicore in Germany. They have been followed, or accompanied, by other significant initiatives in The Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, and Hungary.
Each country is characterized by specific institutions and structures to support and to co-ordinate research, notably at the level of Government and/or Research Institutions or Agencies that are described in the various chapters of this report.
In some countries, there has been a comprehensive national funding programme specifically for Grids, notably in UK and France. In many other cases, the co-ordination on Grid research has been through the spontaneous orientation of the research community exploiting public funds in ICT platforms/applications. However, in these cases there are some notable trends that could allow the various countries to achieve common Europe-wide strategies, leading to comprehensive and coherent funding programmes. One trend is related to recognition, by Governments or Research Institutions, of the role of informal co-ordination structures/committees, for example the D-Grid consortium in Germany.
In other cases, also according to the results of past/current projects and informal co-ordination of the scientific community, some Governments governments or Rresearch Institution institutions have launched specific initiatives oriented to achieve a coherent national strategy for funding Grid research and its industrial impact: notable examples are the countries where the Technological Platform / Quick Start approach has been followed, e.g. by the Italian Ministry for University and Research.
In industry the pickup of the Grid was much slower. This was shown in the discussions of the workshop held at Stuttgart in 2005 (Task 4.1.1). The main reasons here are that Grid was for long considered to be a research topic, hence industry was following a different path in order to meet user requirements of a broader market. The overall funding for Grid development in industry can therefore not be estimated but - as examples of software vendors show – has to be considered substantial.
The chapters of this report show that in all the Member States Grid Computing is considered a high-priority technology with strategic impacts on the development of research and on industrial and e-business applications. It must be pointed out that, though there have been important advances in basic technologies (such as infrastructures, programming interfaces and tools, scheduling and resource management techniques, monitoring, static analysis, and the such), much remains to be done in basic and applied research in Grid Computing in order that this technology will be successfully exploited at the industrial level: open middleware, operating systems, programming environments, composition of complex applications, security, data bases, vertical integration, as well as in standardization.
Though significant differences exist in the approaches currently applied in the various countries, the above mentioned initiatives and trends (that are described in detail in the following chapters) show that there are interesting opportunities in order to better co-ordinate Europe’s various, fragmented efforts towards achieving critical mass, the potential for a more visible impact at an international level, and strategic industrial impacts.
Key findings -
Policy makers and stakeholders are generally well aware of the potential impact of Grid technology.
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Difficult to get a clear picture on the funding information and to compare it, hidden agendas, concerns in sharing information, diversity preferred over a common co-ordinated approach.
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Amount of funding hard to evaluate correctly, but considerable; different funding mechanism; an approximate figure is 150M€/year (without EU funding).
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Industrial exploitation still poor to marginal, a general European weakness, while potential opportunity is broad and significant.
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Strengths
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Quality of the Researchers
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Collaboration
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Fragmented programmes (ivory tower approach linked to national funding schemes); national policies have priorities
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Purely Mostly academic, weak links to industry and business. Missing take-up and commercial exploitation.
Recommendations -
Exploit emerging opportunities in building critical mass, better use of available funding.
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Propose common actions ERA-like.
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Get policy people involved in joint actions, not just researchers looking for funding. Aggregate collective intelligence.
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Evaluate “Variable-geometry” cooperation between a limited number of MS.
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Examine whether the EU budget is the best instrument for adding value or whether action would be better addressed at Member State level.
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Exchange information on initiatives to promote the use and uptake of Grid technology (pilot projects, etc. Invite appropriate members to attend relevant meetings in order to ensure better communication.
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Collaborate and liaise on programmes to promote education and training in the area of Grid technology.
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Support high-risk, high-potential research like semantic service aggregation, autonomic Grid, Grid foundations
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