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Abstract

The Grid was proposed in the late 1990's to enable the next generation of research in science and engineering. The idea was forward looking and bold, but in some ways remarkably simple. It involved connecting high performance computers, large data servers and scientific instruments by high speed networks to allow large scale experiments and computations to be performed both seamlessly and routinely. A critical component in this vision was the development of standard 'middleware', which has taken significant effort and been the focus of large international research and development teams. Ten years later, we are starting to see sufficient maturity in the software systems that it is now possible to do 'real' science.

In this talk I will discuss our experience in building Grid testbeds, and in building robust software tools for performing scientific experiments. In particular, I will highlight a number of successful projects in environmental science, systems biology, chemistry and physics.

About the speaker

Professor Abramson has been involved in computer architecture and high performance computing research since 1979. Previous to joining Monash University in 1997, he has held appointments at Griffith University, CSIRO, and RMIT. At CSIRO he was the program leader of the Division of Information Technology High Performance Computing Program, and was also an adjunct Associate Professor at RMIT in Melbourne. He was also a program manager in the Co-operative Research Centre for Intelligent Decisions Systems and the Co-operative Research Centre for Enterprise Distributed Systems.

Abramson is currently an ARC Professorial Fellow, and professor of Computer Science in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Australia.