World's longest grid computing link unlocks data

Aug 18, 2005: A research project created through the efforts of Perth's Curtin Business School (CBS) and Sun Microsystems has formed a computing grid linking three continents.

The grid is part of the INWA (Innovation Node: Western Australia) grid project, which is investigating the suitability of existing grid technologies for secure, commercial data mining. The participants say the project underscores the notion that sharing and collaboration in technology can result in tremendous gains for network computing.

The three-continent grid links computers at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) in the United Kingdom, Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Sun Microsystems’ SPARC technology is being used in all three nodes of the grid, which is the first of its type and also the longest grid in the world.

"This is the first time that such a grid computing link has been established between three continents," said Professor Ashley Lloyd, the chair of Electronic Business within Curtin Business School.

Professor Lloyd said that the link-up was achieved after initial network routing instabilities between Australia and China were identified and solved by AARNet, Australia's Academic and Research Network.  

"With Sun Microsystems’ hardware and AARNet’s assistance, we were able to link up an existing UK-Australia grid with one of China's most powerful computing facilities. This is the location that runs one of China’s largest computers as well as the “.cn” internet domain,” said Professor Lloyd.

Grid computing involves linking computers across organisations and around the world, utilising the increased computing power to analyse very large amounts of organisational data.

Data mining information is of increasing value for large organisations. It can be used by a company in the commercial sense, for example, to predict customer trends, develop new products and better meet customer needs.

"In many cases, it is only the data held by large commercial organisations that provides statistically significant samples of patterns of behaviour in society for us to use in these research projects,” said Professor Lloyd.

According to Lloyd, linking up with China is particularly significant because it gives companies the potential to better analyse customer behaviour in vast, emerging markets.

"We're demonstrating that it is possible with grid computing to collect high quality data on behaviour within markets.

“With the Grid we can then focus the analytical expertise of subject specialists and deliver on-demand computing power to build the sophisticated models required by organisations developing products and services for their markets," said Professor Lloyd.

“As grids move from the scientific domain to enterprise environments, they will need to deliver enterprise class characteristics, particularly in areas such as security,” said Angus MacDonald, Chief Technology Officer at Sun Microsystems Australasia.

“A grid of this scale drives home the importance of standards-based computing. As we move from the Information Age into the Participation Age, grids such as this will become the cornerstone of commercial and social collaboration,” said MacDonald.

Linking to China was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council in an extension of a project at The University of Edinburgh Management School, which has been running a grid between WA and Edinburgh since 2003.

"China is an exciting market because its economy is growing at a faster rate than contemporary markets such as the US and Europe,” said Professor Lloyd.

Perth is particularly well placed to sit at the centre of grid projects - being in the same time zone as China and with many other parts of Asia.

"Most of the global economy’s growth is happening in this location, with upwards of two billion people in the same time zone," said Professor Lloyd, noting that the response to the project from Chinese and Australian business has been extremely positive.

The WA Government's Office of Science and Innovation, for example, is now supporting the project as part of a broad focus on initiatives with China.

“When people think of grid computing, they often think of lots of small commodity servers hooked together and running Linux.

“While that kind of format unlocks a significant amount of local computing power for certain types of computing problems, this project demonstrates the benefits of grids that extend an enterprises’ reach on a global scale,” said MacDonald.

CBS is working closely with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Computer Network Information Centre to determine additional ways to use the grid.

"Closer socio-economic ties will depend on cooperative development of grid protocols and their compatibility with established and developing business processes within the three regions.

"For this reason, we are working closely with colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences as well as representatives from within China's financial services and telecommunications sectors,” said Professor Lloyd.

This liaison will help determine how grid computing can be used to manage the increased volatility faced by businesses within China as they move towards a full market economy.

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