ECS Intranet:
Grid and Distributed Computing

Themes

Grid computing is about large scale computation, large scale data and large scale collaborations - applied to solving large scale problems. It is the enabling infrastructure for exciting new developments across various subject domains including science, engineering and medicine. Grid computing enables us to tackle problems by bringing together distributed resources, to be used cooperatively to solve problems which may require an enormous amount of computing power, and it makes cost-effective use of those resources.

Research Areas

Testbeds

Under the UK national e-Science initiative, we are participating in three national testbeds aimed at testing grid technology in a number of distinct science and engineering areas, in collaboration with industry and commerce. These include bioinformatics, combinatorial chemistry and engineering design and optimisation. The testbeds inform our longer term research in grid computing infrastructures and benefit from our collaboration with IT Innovation, with whom we participate in grid computing projects across multiple domains.

Semantic Grid

We are developing conceptual architectures for research and development in grid computing, adopting a holistic view that considers the requirements of the application scientists at the data/computation, information and knowledge layers. Our architectures adopt a service-oriented view throughout, informed by our research in Agent Based Computing, and may be realised through current implementation technologies such as Web Services. Research issues in this context include enactment of workflow, provenance, and the creation of virtual organisations.

Collaboration

Support for large scale distributed collaboration includes computer mediated collaboration facilities, for example the Access Grid multicast videoconferencing facility. Enhanced infrastructures for collaboration will incorporate advanced knowledge techniques, such as support for live annotation, and we are extending these ideas to integrate smart spaces including online laboratories and portable information appliances. In addition to realtime tools and services, we are developing techniques for post-hoc reuse of archived materials in support of large scale collaborations.