The Netherlands present themselves at SC|11 in Seattle WA with a demonstration of several innovative and interesting projects. This is a continuation of the Dutch presence in Baltimore MD (2002), Phoenix AZ (2003), Pittsburgh PA (2004), Seattle WA (2005), Tampa FL (2006), Reno NV (2007), Austin TX (2008), Portland OR (2009) en New Orleans LA (2010).

The "Dutch Pavillion" is cooperation and combined show of major research institutes and not-for-profit research network infrastructure and supercomputing organisations and funding agencies.

For a view at the booth click here (only during the exhibition of course).

What can be seen?

Open Source Implementation of IEEE 802.1ag for OpenFlow
The GLIF Open Lightpath Exchange
Jungle Computing
e-Science Center
Automated GOLE Demonstrationomputing
Multi level performance optimisation of video transcoding
Urban Flood
Interactive Networks 2
Dutch National Supercomputer Huygens at SARA
Netherlands National Computing Facilities Foundation
Multi level performance optimisation of video transcoding
BiG Grid Project

SARA has implemented the IEEE 802.1ag protocol as a set of open source utilities. A couple of strategically placed OpenFlow switches in the sandbox will be used to send Ethernet frames with Ethertype 0x8902 to an external daemon running the 802.1ag utilities. End-users will be able to send Ethernet pings and traceroutes to these switches for monitoring and troubleshooting. The 802.1ag enabled OpenFlow switches will also send periodic hello messages that will be shown on a live status website. We intend to show that the IEEE 802.1ag protocol is a powerful tool for monitoring and troubleshooting Ethernet VPNs and slices. We request a couple of OpenFlow switches with flow entries that will send 802.1ag CFM PDUs to the external 802.1ag daemon. The experiment will also include Ethernet circuits to StarLight, SARA in Amsterdam and other 802.1ag enabled test sites. For more information about the 802.1ag utilities see: http://nrg.sara.nl/dot1ag-utilities.

NetherLight is one of the GLIF Open Lightpath Exchanges (GOLE). GLIF is the Global Lambda Integrated Facility, an international virtual organisation that promotes the paradigm of lambda networking.

Simulatie van vroege evolutie van sterren-clusters, gelijktijdig gebruikmakend van een gedistribueerde combinatie van (GPU-)clusters, supercomputers, en stand-alone machines. Visualisatie van zowel ster-cluster-simulatie als van gebruikte gedistribueerde set van hardware (= Jungle Computing Systeem).

Urban Flood. Demonstratie van het gebruik van schaalbare Cloud computing in een sensor toepassing.

The Interactive Networks demo is based on the work that was demonstrated in 2008. In the previous demo, the virtual infrastructure on which Interactive Networks ran was static. In this demo, users will be able to create the virtual infrastructure on which Interactive Networks runs, too.

The SNE group at the UvA and the High Performance Distributed computing at the VU intend to demonstrate multi level performance optimization of transatlantic video transcoding of high definition video. The demo application will select optimal network paths and computing resources based on the semantic description of the available infrastructure.

Multi level performance optimisation of video transcoding

Introduction

BiG Grid is a large scale effort to realise a major grid for Science and Research in The Netherlands. The project has become known under the name "BiG Grid", and has been targeted to a broad range of scientific research disciplines which can take advantage of the ICT resources, available in a science grid infrastructure.

While the Netherlands has been a leading player in the development of the grid, and has considerable expertise in bio-informatics, distributed sensors networks, and particle physics, the large-scale infrastructure to fully exploit this position of leadership is missing. It has been the purpose of the BiG Grid proposal to realise such a science-wide grid infrastructure in the Netherlands.

A basic ingredient for the proposed infrastructure is the network. The Netherlands are already in an excellent position, due to the world-class network services provided by SURFnet. The currently available resources (like the National Supercomputer, compute cluster capacity, data storage facilities, etc.) will need to be "gridified" and extended to a level which enables ground-breaking scientific research.

The BiG Grid project is funded for the period 2007-2012 with a total budget of M€ 28.8. The BiG Grid project will cover a full range of hardware entities, but also a significant amount of the budget is reserved for manpower, to attract and to bring a wide range of scientific disciplines to the science grid. The project has been initiated by the Netherlands National Computing Facilities Foundation (NCF), the National institute for subatomic physics (Nikhef) and the Netherlands Bio-Informatics Centre (NBIC).

Mission

The project's mission is:

To realise a fully operational world-class and resources-rich grid environment at the national level in the Netherlands to serve public scientific research, including particle physics, life sciences and all other disciplines, and to encourage actively general grid usage across all disciplines.

The science case for the BiG Grid proposal is the integral of many different science cases, reflecting the broad scientific community base. The realisation of BiG Grid is crucial to the success and continuity of many Dutch research groups, covering important areas such as life sciences in a broad context, astronomy, particle physics, meteorology and climate research, water management, to name but a few. The very nature of the new infrastructure, a multidimensional collaboration enabler and accelerator, allows for direct participation from social sciences, humanities, and also addresses communities in administrative domains (administrative grids such as digital academic repositories).

The realisation of the grid infrastructure provides opportunities for enhanced international visibility. Dutch participation in international generic grid developments is already prominent (in flagship projects like EGEE and DEISA) and are on a national scale covered by the BSIK funded VL-e project (Virtual Laboratory for e-Science), whilst for the life sciences, coordinated by the Netherlands Genomics Initiative, NBIC (Netherlands BioInformatics Centre), partly BSIK funded as well, is the key player for enabling bio-informatics methodology.

Realisation of this major project puts the Netherlands at the forefront of grid developments. The infrastructure enables many national ambitions. The excellent position of Dutch academic hospitals in their collections of patient data can be enhanced by using the grid for biobanking. Major advances in drug discovery are enabled through combining data from various research communities as well as through the availability of massive compute resources enabling direct drug interaction modelling. The infrastructure allows industrial research labs (e.g. Philips) to profit from the available resources. It allows the LOFAR project to not only position itself as a multi sensor radio-astronomy centre but also as the European centre from which a variety of scientific communities using the LOFAR data will be served. It positions the Netherlands as one of the (worldwide only) ten Tier-1 sites for CERN's LHC experiments.

More information

More information can be obtained from the BiG Grid project office or from the BiG Grid website (www.biggrid.nl).

BiG Grid Project Office p/a NWO/NCF

Postbus 93575

2509 AN Den Haag

p.michielse@nwo.nl