UNICORE
| Topic: | Uniform Interface to Computing Resources | |
| Granted by: |  BMBF |
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| 1. Grant Period: | 01.08.1997 - 31.12.1999 | |
| 2. Grant Period: | 01.01.2000 - 31.12.2002 (see  UNICORE Plus) |
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| Contact Person: | Dietmar Erwin, ZAM | |
| Partners: |
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ZAM - Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH |
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DWD - Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach | |
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RUS - Rechenzentrum der Universität Stuttgart | |
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Genias Software GmbH, Regensburg | |
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Pallas GmbH, Brühl | |
| Collaborators: |
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ECMWF - European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK |
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LRZ - Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, München | |
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PC2 - Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing | |
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Rechenzentrum der Universität Karlsruhe | |
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ZIB - Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin | |
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T-Systems (former debis Systemhaus), Stuttgart | |
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INPRO- Innovationsgesellschaft für fortgeschrittene Produktionssysteme in der Fahrzeugindustrie mbH, Berlin | |
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Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe, Hayes, UK | |
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Hewlett-Packard | |
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HITACHI Europe | |
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IBM | |
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NEC | |
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SGI/Cray Research GmbH, München | |
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Fujitsu - Siemens | |
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Sun Microsystems | |
Synopsis
Advances in High Performance Computing have provided science with a new research tool. Computational research and engineering used in combination with established methods of analysis and observation makes investigation of natural phenomena and technical problems possible beyond the reach of the traditional methods alone. Indeed, for macro-scale phenomena such as astrophysics and planetary weather, which cannot be controlled or reproduced in the laboratory, computational research may offer the only possibility for controlled experimentation.
Many researchers in industry and academic do not yet have easy access to the existing high performance facilities. It is economically not feasible to provide required systems to each research and development environment. On the other hand, interfaces to supercomputing resources over the network tend to be both complicated and vendor specific.
Goals
The goal of UNICORE is to deliver software that allows users to submit jobs to remote high performance computing resources without having to learn details of the target operating system, data storage conventions and techniques, or administrative policies and procedures at the target site. Existing Web-based technologies will be exploited wherever possible.
The user interface will be based on Java and modern browser technology to allow access to UNICORE resources from anywhere in the Internet for properly authorized users and eliminate software distribution.
A Network Job Supervisor (NJS) at each UNICORE site will interpret the Abstract Job Object (AJO) generated by the user interface, manage the jobs and the necessary data. NJS will interoperate with vendor specific batch systems, e.g. Cray NQE, IBM Load Leveler, Codine, etc.
UNICORE will be implemented in three overlapping phases. Phase I handles self-contained, independent jobs. Phase II manages access to data at other UNICORE sites while Phase III deals with interdependent tasks executing at different UNICORE sites.
Status and Results
The project has been successfully completed and the results have been presented at the
Symposium on Metacomputing and Distributed Computing in September 1999. The user view of the UNICORE system is given in the (UNICORE User Tutorial).
The work on UNICORE is continued in a follow-on project called
UNICORE Plus.
Literature
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UNICORE: uniform access to supercomputing as an element of electronic commerce J. Almond, D.Snelling in: FGCS Volume 15 (1999), Numbers 5-6, October 1999, pp. 539-548 |
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UNICORE: Secure and Uniform Access to Distributed Resources via the World Wide Web J. Almond, D. Snelling A White Paper, October 1998 |
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UNICORE: Uniform Interface to Computing Resources D. Erwin Presentation at the "Desktop Access to Remote Resources" Workshop at the Argonne National Laboratory, October 8-9, 1998 |
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The UNICORE Architecture: Seamless Access to Distributed Resources M. Romberg in: Proceedings of the eights IEEE International Symposium on 'High Performance Distributed Computing' HPDC-8, August 3-6, 1999; IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, pp. 287-293 |
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The Abstract Job Object: An Open Framework for Seamless Computing D. Snelling Presentation at the "Desktop Access to Remote Resources" Workshop at the Argonne National Laboratory, October 8-9, 1998 |
last change 14.04.2008 | Sabine Höfler-Thierfeldt | Print