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PC Clusters have become an extremely inexpensive way to build quite high powered parallel machines, and it is clear that this trend will continue for some time. Such clusters can provide enormous computational power for individual projects or departments within an organisation. However, as the number of clusters increases within an enterprise, and then globally, there is the need for a software architecture which can integrate these into larger "grids of clusters".
This talk will focus on the issues of integratation, with particular reference to "Globus", an international effort designed to deliver a toolkit for programming on a global computational grid. I will site our experience at using a locally developed tool called Nimrod (and its commercial counterpart, EnFuzion), a tool for performing parametric modelling, and explain the design and development of a new tool called Nimrod/G, which is "Grid Aware". Nimrod/G provides specific functions for resource location and scheduling where the machine base is highly variable.
The talk will also discuss some of the related enhancements to Nimrod, such as Nimrod/O, a tool for performing complex computational optimisation using the grid. I will gives an example of the use of Nimrod/O in the automatic optimization of a 2 dimensional aerofoil. Another new tool called GriddLeS, which focuses on more general Grid applications than Nimrod, will also be discussed.
More project information is available at http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~davida/nimrod.htm
