The SC'98 International Grid
(iGrid) research demonstrations showcase international collaborations using
advanced high-speed networks, enabling researchers to work together, whether
their colleagues live across the country or across the ocean, and to access
geographically-distributed computing, storage, and display resources.
The iGrid booth, jointly sponsored by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory
at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Indiana University, provides
global connectivity so collaborators from the United States, Australia,
Canada, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland,
and Taiwan can demonstrate their use of advanced networks to solve complex
computational problems.
Enabling these international demonstrations
is the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored initiative STAR
TAP - the Science, Technology And Research Transit Access Point.
Started in 1997, STAR TAP anchors the NSF vBNS (very high-speed Backbone
Network Service) international program. Networks from Canada (CAnet-2),
Singapore (SingaREN), Taiwan (TANet), Russia (MirNET), and the Asian-Pacific
Advanced Network consortium (APAN) are connected; Indiana University is
the lead institution of the APAN-USA joint venture, named TransPAC.
STAR TAP connections to the Nordic countries (NORDUnet), The Netherlands
(SURFnet), France (RENATER), and Israel are imminent. Other USA federal
agency advanced networks, notably the Department of Defense DREN, Department
of Energy ESnet, and NASA NREN are also connected to STAR TAP. STAR
TAP is managed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, Argonne National
Laboratory, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Chicago's Ameritech
Advanced Data Services.
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory
and Indiana University, members of NCSA's National Computational Science
Alliance partnership, are working to advance the development of the International
Technology Grid. The Grid is a prototype 21st century computational
and information infrastructure integrating high-performance computers,
visualization environments, remote instruments, and massive databases via
high-speed networks to support advanced applications.
iGrid Infrastructure
The iGrid booth contains a variety of SGI
workstations (Onyx2, Onyx, Octane, O2), NT/Windows PCs, a plasma panel
display, and three ImmersaDesk[tm] and ImmersaDesk2[tm] virtual reality
displays. The ImmersaDesks can be run in virtual-reality (stereoscopic)
or large-screen (monoscopic) display mode.
The SC'98 SCinet (Scientific Computing
Network) onsite network offers researchers access to both the commodity
Internet and to USA federal high-performance networks, including the NSF
vBNS (and, hence, access to STAR TAP), NASA NREN, Department of Defense
DREN, Department of Energy ESnet, and Defense Advanced Research Project
Agency AAI.
Contact:
iGrid is sponsored by the Electronic
Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Indiana
University.
Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago
http://www.evl.uic.edu
ph: +1.312.996.3002
fax: +1.312.413.7585
Thomas A. DeFanti, tom @ uic.edu
Maxine D. Brown, maxine @ uic.edu
Dana Plepys, dana @ eecs.uic.edu
Alan Verlo, alan @ eecs.uic.edu
Office of the Vice President for Information
Technology, Indiana University
http://www.indiana.edu
ph: +1.812.855.5752
fax: +1.812.855.3310
Michael McRobbie, vpit @ indiana.edu
Donald F. McMullen, mcmullen @ indiana.edu
Karen Adams, kadams @ indiana.edu
CAVE, ImmersaDesk, and ImmersaDesk2 are
trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.
Funding for iGrid is provided by the
National Science Foundation, Indiana University, and the Electronic Visualization
Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
