Purdue TeraGrid

Carol Song

TeraGrid is an ambitious national project undertaken by the U.S. to build the world's largest, most comprehensive grid computing cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research. Purdue University is one of nine TeraGrid partner sites. Purdue is partnering with IU to connect to the Teragrid HUB in Chicago, Purdue will contribute part of its computing resources to teragrid as well as visualization facility (Envision Center), instrumentation (PTO remote sensing), and data collections to the TeraGrid by Oct. 1, 2004. In 2003, IU and Purdue University were awarded $3 million via the "Terascale Extensions Program" (TEP) proposal solicitation by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The IU/Purdue proposal, called the IP-grid (Indiana Purdue grid), connects IU/Purdue at 20 gigabits/second (Gbps) to the 40 Gbps TeraGrid national backbone. In 2004, Purdue participated along with the other eight sites in a joint, $30 million/year TeraGrid Maintenance and Operations proposal to the NSF. This proposal will fund a full-time Purdue Site Lead and three full time equivalents (FTEs) within ITaP. It will also fund 1.6 FTEs to create science gateways to the Nanotechnology (NCN) and Remote Sensing community (PTO). This team will collaborate with the other TeraGrid sites to make the Teragrid an effective discovery tool that harnesses massive computational power, network bandwidth, data storage, instrumentation, and visualization capabilities that serves the scientific communities.

Locally, the IP-grid project will enhance the existing virtual campus grids connecting the State of Indiana's three largest research campuses (Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), Purdue University in West Lafayette, and Indiana University Bloomington).

http://www.purdue.teragrid.org/