Grid Computing Technology in Argentina: possibilities and Advances in Science and Education

TURJANSKI, PABLO; FERNÁNDEZ SLEZAK, DIEGO; MOCSKOS, ESTEBAN; LEON CARRI, CAROLINA; MARSHALL, GUILLERMO; MONETTI, JULIO; CATANIA, CARLOS; GARCIA GARINO, CARLOS

Buenos Aires

Congreso; II Bienal Argentino-Checa e-Golems: “La Sociedad de la Información y de la Comunicación – Tecnologías Emergentes y sus Aplicaciones al Arte y a la Sociedad”; 2007

Grid Computing is a rather recent technology that currently is object of intensive research<br />efforts in USA, Europe, Japan, Australia and other countries. The development of Grid in South<br />America is quite well established in Brazil, but is rather novel in Argentina.<br />Grid Computing proposes the unlimited access to different computational resources like com-<br />puter power, instruments, data storage and so on. In fact the name of Grid comes from a Power<br />Grid analogy, in the sense that electricity is a pervasive resource to be accessed in transparent way.<br />Different issues can be addressed so as to deal with this technology: infrastructure that means<br />to consider computer networks and hardware resources, management of the grid in order to harvest<br />and broker resources and to schedule jobs in a transparent way to the users, and, finally, the design<br />of grid applications, and the gridification of legacy applications.<br />In order to reach a mature usage of Grid in Argentina different issues have to be addressed:<br />training of human resources, institutional agreements in order to provide access to idle computa-<br />tional equipments and a proper communications network infrastructure.<br />This work provides an overview of the Grid Computing state of the art in Argentina and points<br />out different research projects in course in the country like the Supercomputing Center recently<br />settled in School of Sciences of University of Buenos Aires and the Regional Grid initiative at<br />Mendoza City.<br />Different applications in areas like Artificial Intelligence and Computational Mechanics are<br />shown. Finally the possibilities and impact of Grid Computing on Science and Education in<br />Argentina are discussed.<br /><br />