Toolkit 2.0 Increases Access Grid Demand

released 10.28.03

Contact

M. E. Spada Argonne National Laboratory spada@mcs.anl.gov 630.252.7715 phone 630.240.2759 mobile

CHICAGO — For Access Grid (AG) users who have experienced the rich collaborations enabled by AG 1.X, the release of Access Grid Toolkit 2.0 has been icing on the cake. Evidenced at the recent AG Development sessions held outside Chicago, the interest and demand for collaborative tools continue to drive development of grid applications allowing distributed resources to work together seamlessly.

"The new AG 2.0 software is quickly becoming the front door to the grid—triggering increasing waves of deployment and usage beyond the traditional high-performance community of this infrastructure," notes Michael Papka, deputy director of the Futures Lab at Argonne National Laboratory.

A significant upgrade of AG 1, the new toolkit includes streamlined user interfaces, robust middleware, and services that enable participants to share experiences through advanced media capabilities such as high-quality video and multiple layered streaming. AG 2.0 incorporates the lessons learned from a broad array of user experiences with AG 1, fixes bugs associated with AG 1, and dramatically improves usability.

The primary goals of AG 2.0 are to:

• improve and integrate more tightly the core functionality of AG 1


• incorporate the latest advances in grid-computing technology, including GSI 2.0 (security) and Globus IO (data transfer and socket security)


• support plug-in applications, including application services furnishing access to third-party resources, such as data storage and scheduling, that are not part of a venue or node and shared applications providing collaborative functionality and tools, such as shared presentation and image viewers


• allow a wider range of client platforms.

Users worldwide have documented positive feedback regarding the increased usability of AG 2.0. The most remarked upon improvement is the flexible functionality across a broad range of client platforms, from an advanced node with tiled display and multiple video streams to a minimal node with compact display and a single video stream. Additionally, the accommodation of diverse node types—room, desktop and laptop—greatly enhances the usability and context for usage, making AG 2.0 extremely "user-friendly."

"Access Grid 2.0 software hides the computer science so the actual science can be discussed and done," says Dave Semeraro, associate director of visualization for the Visualization and Virtual Environments Group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

General Atomics has been using AG 2.0 as part of the Fusion Collaboratory (funded by the U.S. Department of Energy), and deployed AG 2.0 at three main magnetic fusion experimental sites in the United States earlier this year. David P. Schissel, principal investigator, notes that "AG 2.0 allowed a level of detailed scientific interaction by remote participants that previously was not possible." General Atomics will use the Access Grid and AG 2.0 to support the Cy04 experimental campaigns. "The Access Grid systems will allow a larger number of off-site scientists to contribute in real time to the experiment," Schissel says. "First, this new capability saves valuable research funds that would be spent on travel. Secondly, by using the AG, scientists and students who would not have otherwise been able to engage due to restricted budgets, will now participate and contribute. Thus, the quality of magnetic fusion research will be raised and understanding will be accelerated."

Using AG 2.0, users can operate personal or shared nodes. Each user has access to other users and the capability of carrying around data, storing it at a venue and/or sharing it and otherwise collaborating with other users. Toolkit 2.0 presents a single, unified interface that is user-friendly and identifies problems in a clear and focused manner. It also enhances the user experience by providing a dedicated Virtual Venue client and integrated node management. It even addresses the challenge of integrated network failure recovery.

Equally exciting to the grid user community is the potential for near-term development of additional AG 2.0 enhancements via open-source software development. Planned enhancements include integrating more grid-computing capabilities, expanding the range of node platforms, incorporating additional application services, supporting richer collaborative tools, and developing network services.

The Access Grid, http://www.accessgrid.org/, is an ensemble of resources, including multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments, and interfaces to Grid middleware and to visualization environments. These resources are used to support group-to-group interactions across the Grid, such as large-scale distributed meetings, collaborative work sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials, and training. The Access Grid thus differs from desktop-to-desktop tools that focus on individual communication. Each user institution has one or more AG nodes, or "designed spaces," that contain the high-end audio and visual technology needed to provide a high-quality compelling user experience. The nodes are also used as a research environment for the development of distributed data and visualization corridors and for the study of issues relating to collaborative work in distributed environments.

The AG technology was developed by the Futures Laboratory at Argonne National Laboratory, under research funding from the Department of Energy Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and Microsoft Research. Argonne National Laboratory is operated by the University of Chicago.

To download AG 2.0, see http://www.accessgrid.org/software/.