In-Grid: Innovative Grid Developments for Engineering Applications
Keywords: Grid Computing, Service Oriented Computing
The German D-Grid initiative (www.d-grid.de) brings together scientists from more than 100 German research organizations, universities and companies to develop German’s e-Science ("enhanced science") distributed networked IT infrastructure. D-Grid is supported by a 17 Million Euro grant from the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). The objective of the initiative is to coordinate and strengthen Germanys existing activities in Grid computing, which includes e-Infrastructure, Grid middleware and Grid applications, to provide a next-generation digital infrastructure for German researchers enabling global connectivity, international collaborations, ongoing exchange of experience, and instantaneous publication of research results. The work is also expected to lay the foundation for e-business on demand solutions in the commercial environment, providing organisations with a higher degree of adaptability.
The deliverable of the D-Grid initiative is to develop a national e-Science infrastructure that enables the connection to existing Grid initiatives in the context of the European Union, the British e-Science programme, the Cyberinfrastructure programme in the USA, and the Global Grid Forum.
There are six projects in the D-Grid initiative:
The D-Grid infrastructure project develops fundamental Grid services based on middleware for access to computing resources and large amounts of data, management of virtual organisations, authentication and authorization, security, metadata catalogues, resource brokerage, network technologies, monitoring and accounting. It provides a horizontal platform for the following (vertical) community Grid projects.
The HEP-Grid project focuses on high-energy physics and is closely collaborating with the CERN Hadron Collider Grid community.
The Astro-Grid project brings together astrophysical and astronomical scientists within a virtual, distributed, collaborative laboratory with integrated data archives and access to scientific experiments and instruments.
The Medi-Grid project represents the German medical-bioinformatics community collaborating on image processing, bioinformatics and clinical research, and their intercommunication.
The C3 (Collaborative Climate Community) Grid project's goal is to develop a highly productive Grid-based research platform for the effective scientific analysis of high-volume Earth modelling and observation data.
The In-Grid project is developing a Grid environment for modelling, simulation and optimization of engineering applications in the areas of foundry technology, metal forming, groundwater flows, turbine simulation, and fluid and structural mechanics.
We are part of the In-Grid project. The goal of our work is to develop (a) security and trust infrastructures for engineering applications, (b) methods for software license management in Grid environments, (c) approaches for supporting service-oriented engineering workflows, (d) methods for knowledge-based decision support in engineering applications.
Funding: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, D-Grid Inititiative
Contact: Kay Dörnemann, Tim Dörnemann, Steffen Heinzl, Markus Mathes, Christian Schridde, Matthew Smith
