GridCoord DoW

Germany

Summary of activities and strengths

Scientific research in Grid technology has a long tradition in Germany. Much of the impetus came from the national supercomputing centres in Munich, Stuttgart, Jülich, Berlin and Hanover, which sought for user-friendly methods to provide a seamless access to supercomputer facilities. The most prominent project, Unicore, is internationally well-known and was adopted by a large number of countries within and outside Europe (see www.unicore.org/forum.htm). But also other research projects on Grid resource management, security, scheduling, brokerage, etc. provided valuable software packages which were deployed, for example in the FhG Resource Grid and many other Grid testbeds.

The major scientific strengths of German Grid research are in the following topics:

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  Innovative software technology for Grids and enabling platforms: resource discovery and resource management, high-performance programming environments, secure access architectures, adaptive and autonomic environments;
  
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  Production grid design and deployment, especially with Unicore- and Globus-based infrastructures, resource management and monitoring, data management, storage management, administration and security, remote visualization;
  
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  Grid Applications, most notably in Computational Chemistry, Engineering, Life Sciences, Earth Observation, Astronomy, Climatology.
  

We expect all of the mentioned focal points of expertise to become greatly extended by the just starting projects in the national D-Grid initiative, where five community projects and one integration project are just now being started (for a description see below). D-Grid provides, for the first time, a coherent national strategy for Grid research and development.

Key projects

D-Grid: National project on Grid research and deployment

D-Grid is the national initiative for e-science in Germany. The impetus for establishing D-Grid came from several research institutes, including the Research Centre Karlsruhe, the Leibniz Computing Centre in Munich, the High-Performance Computing Centre in Stuttgart, the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, and the Zuse Institute in Berlin. Having its roots back in 2003, D-Grid only recently got momentum with the start of the first funded research projects in September 2005.

As stated in the white paper and also in the research agenda (see www.d-grid.de), D-Grid aims to create a national platform with four main objectives:

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  Create an e-science competence network,
  
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  Develop Grid middleware,
  
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  Create basic infrastructure,
  
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  Establish e-science pilot projects.
  

The resulting D-Grid projects are structured into one horizontally organized “integration project” and five vertically organized “community projects”. According to the research agenda, the community projects shall be the driving forces. The integration project will take up the results and software of the community projects and will consolidate and integrate them into a national Grid environment which will become the basis for several overlay Grids for the different science communities.

Five community projects have been selected for funding in an initial round; additional projects are expected to be funded in a second round in about two years. The community projects cover the domains

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  Climate and earth sciences (C3-Grid),
  
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  Medicine and bioinformatics (Med Grid),
  
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  High-energy (HEP-Grid),
  
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  Astrophysics (GACG),
  
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  Computational sciences and engineering (InGrid).
  

These projects – and the central integration project (DGI) – are financed by the German Ministry of Research (BMBF) for three years.

Additional funding is available for the area of information and knowledge management, which is covered by a separate call for proposals. Moreover, there are plans to support more industrially oriented Grid projects (see below).

From a technical point of view, the basic Grid infrastructure will be built using already existing components, such as Unicore, DFN/G-WIN, GridKa and the existing HPC centres. Virtualisation is an essential ingredient of D-Grid. It will allow opening the usage of data, computing and scientific equipment to all researchers, not only those having a direct fixed physical connection to it. This will allow collaborative usage of all kinds of scientific resources, eventually providing support of virtual communities. This includes scientific communities in several areas such as particle physics, astrophysics, climatology, and medicine.

Basic middleware tools and services will include groupware and conferencing tools, security and access infrastructure, directories and roaming support. The service layer comprises the more typical Grid software, such as resource sharing, data sharing and collaboration services. Up to this layer, everything is general and also applicable for industrial applications. The e-science support layer consists of a number of tools that can be used for a large spectrum of scientific applications. This includes modelling, simulation, experimentation and application tools and environments and tools.

The e-science competence network will consist of a number of centres that will act as focal points by providing resources and know how; develop applications scenarios for science and industry; do research and development work on Grid systems and support virtual communities.

Compared to other similar initiatives, D-Grid is not solely driven by academia, but it also comprises large number of industrial partners. This can be seen from the list of partners who signed the D-Grid Memorandum of Understanding, which states the goals of D-Grid:

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  Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven
  
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  Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, Potsdam
  
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  C&C Research Laboratories, NEC Europe Ltd.
  
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  Deusches Elektronen Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg
  
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  Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach
  
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  Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum DKRZ, Hamburg
  
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  Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum DKFZ, Heidelberg
  
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  Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. Köln,
  
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  DFN-Verein, Berlin
  
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  Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich
  
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  Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe
  
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  Fraunhofer Grid-Allianz, ITWM, Kaiserslautern
  
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  Fraunhofer Institut, Integrierte Informations- und Publikationssysteme (IPSI), Darmstadt
  
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  Fraunhofer-Institut FOKUS, Berlin
  
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  Fraunhofer-Institut für Algorithmen und Wiss. Rechnen (SCAI) , Sankt Augustin
  
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  Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Informatik, Berlin
  
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  Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena
  
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  FU Berlin, Institut für Meteorologie, Berlin
  
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  Gesellschaft für Schwerionen-Forschung mbH (GSI), Darmstadt
  
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  Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen, Göttingen
  
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  GKSS-Forschungszentrum, Geesthacht
  
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  Hochleistungsrechenzentrum Stuttgart (HLRS), Stuttgart
  
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  Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Computer- und Medienservice, Berlin
  
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  IBM Deutschland Entwicklung GmbH, Böblingen
  
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  Institute for Science Networking ISN Oldenburg GmbH, Oldenburg
  
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  Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin, Berlin
  
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  Leibnitz-Rechenzentrum der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, München
  
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  Marum, Zentrum für Marine Umweltwissenschaften, Universität Bremen, Bremen
  
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  Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching
  
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  Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik, Albert-Einstein-Institut, Golm
  
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  Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie Hamburg, Hamburg
  
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  Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie, Modelle und Daten, Hamburg
  
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  neofonie, Technologieentwicklung und Informationsmanagement, Berlin
  
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  Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing, Paderborn
  
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  Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig, and TU Braunschweig
  
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  Regionales Rechenzentrum Erlangen, Erlangen
  
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  Regionales Rechenzentrum für Niedersachsen RRZN, Universität Hannover, Hannover
  
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  Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik, Heidelberg
  
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  Silicon Graphics GmbH SGI, Grasbrunn
  
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  SUB Göttingen, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Göttingen
  
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  Sun Microsystems GmbH, Ratingen
  
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  Technische Universität Dresden, Universitätsrechenzentrum, Dresden
  
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  Technische Universität Dresden, Zentrum für Hochleistungsrechnen, Dresden
  
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  T-Systems, Solutions for Research GmbH, Stuttgart
  
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  TU Chemnitz, Fakultät für Informatik, Chemnitz
  
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  Universität Tübingen, Zentrum für Datenverarbeitung, Tübingen
  
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  Universität Bremen, Zentrum für angewandte Informationstechnologien ZAIT, Bremen
  
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  Universität Dortmund, Dortmund
  
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  Universität Dortmund, Hochschulrechenzentrum, Dortmund
  
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  Universität Göttingen, Abt. Med. Informatik, Göttingen
  
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  Universität Hamburg, Regionales Rechenzentrum, Hamburg
  
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  Universität Hannover, Inst. für Informationssystem, Hannover
  
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  Universität Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern
  
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  Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Rechenzentrum, Karlsruhe
  
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  Universität Karlsruhe, Inst. für Angewandte Mathematik, Karlsruhe
  
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  Universität Münster, Münster
  
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  Universität Siegen, Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Siegen
  
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  Universität Stuttgart, Institut für Parallele und Verteilte Systeme (IPVS), Stuttgart
  
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  Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal
  
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  Universität zu Köln, Zentrum für Angewandte Information (ZAIK), Köln
  
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  Zentrum für Datenverarbeitung, Universität Mainz, Mainz
  

Research projects with a significant industrial impact

While the above-mentioned D-Grid projects are primarily driven by academic partners, the industry plays a leading role in projects on wide area networking. The German Research Network (www.dfn.de) focuses on the improved utilization of the national wide area networks (B-WIN, G-WIN, and now X-WIN) for the specific demands of Grid computing. In June 2004 the project VIOLA (Vertically Integrated Optical Testbed for Large Applications in DFN) has started with a large industry participation. Within VIOLA a consortium with partners from industry, research laboratories, universities and the DFN association is implementing a German „Optical Testbed“ in the region of Aachen–Bonn–Cologne (State of North-Rhine-Westphalia) and an extension to Erlangen–Nuremberg (State of Bavaria). The VIOLA project aims at testing advanced network equipment and network architectures and developing software tools for the user-driven dynamical provision of bandwidth. Several telecommunication companies and industrial users participate in VIOLA.

The state of Baden-Württemberg has created its own centre of competence for high performance computing (hkz-bw) recently. Hardware resources at Stuttgart (HLRS) and Karlsruhe (RZ) are coupled to form a regional Grid infrastructure. Furthermore substantial funding for research in Grid is provided. For more information check www.hkz-bw.de. Similar activities were started in other stated of Germany like North-Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria.

This all reflect the federal structure of Germany which results in a Grid infrastructure that is built on regional networks connected at a national level and – at least partially – integrated into a European infrastructure like Géant and DEISA. In the frame of international activities Grid connectivity is established with leading countries like the US and Japan. This has resulted in a number of worldwide visible activities like the collaboration of ZIB with the Cactus team and the worldwide demonstrations of Grid computing by HLRS and its partners.

Links to International and EU activities

There exist many bilateral research collaborations with other countries such as the US, Japan, France, Italy, UK, and others. While the exact number of collaborations can only be estimated, more concrete data is available on the German participation in EU projects.

Within the FP5, German partners participated in the following IST INFSO projects:

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  ASP-BP (Univ. Stuttgart, Gesellschaft für Medizinische Datenverarbeitung, CAS Software AG)
  
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  Crossgrid (HLRS, FZ Karlsruhe, Technische Univ. München)
  
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  FlowGrid (ZIB Berlin, Hamburgische Schiffbau-Versuchsanstalt)
  
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  Damien (HLRS)
  
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  DataGrid (Univ. Heidelberg, ZIB Berlin)
  
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  EuroGrid (FZ Jülich (CO), Pallas, DWD, Debis Gmbh)
  
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  Gemss (ASD Advanced Simulation and Design Gmbh, MPI)
  
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  Grace (Univ. Stuttgart)
  
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  Grasp (HLRS)
  
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  GridLab (Gridware GmbH, ZIB Berlin, MPI)
  
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  GridStart (FZ Jülich, HLRS, European Southern Observatory)
  
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  Grip (FZ Jülich (CO), DWD, Intel)
  
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  LeGE-WG (HLRS, Univ. Koblenz, Univ. Erlangen–Nürnberg)
  
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  OpenmolGrid (FZ Jülich (CO)
  

German participation in FP6:

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  Akogrimo (HLRS, Univ. Hohenheim)
  
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  CoreGRID (FhG, FZ Jülich, HLRS, Univ. Dortmund, Univ. Passau, ZIB, Univ. Münster)
  
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  DataMiningGrid (DaimlerChrysler, FhG)
  
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  DEISA (FZ Jülich, RZG, HLRS. LRZ)
  
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  DILIGENT (FhG IPSI)
  
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  EGEE (DESY, DKRZ, FhG, FZK, GSI, DFN)
  
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  EVERGROW (Univ. Magdeburg)
  
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  GridCoord (HLRS, ZIB)
  
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  HPC4U (Univ. Paderborn)
  
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  InteliGrid (TU Dresden, Conject AG, Obermeyer GmbH)
  
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  K-WF Grid (FhG)
  
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  NextGRID (Microsoft Innovations, SAP AG, caesar, T-Systems, Intel, FZ Jülich, HLRS)
  
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  Provenance (DLR)
  
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  SIMDAT (FhG(CO), Audi, Msc.Software, Intel, Oracle, Ontoprise, DWD, U. Karlsruhe, Eumetsat)
  
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  UniGridS (FZ Jülich (CO), Intel, T-Systems Solutions for Research)
  
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  HPC-Europa (HLRS)
  

Additionally, German universities and institutes provide input and participate in international standardization organizations such as GGF, IETF, OASIS, and others.