Newsletters

APSTC e-Newsletter - November 2008 C-Issue# 7

SUMMARY
A) Projects & Developments Update
1. ClusterGrid
2. Bio-LiveCD
3. Co Space "Project Wonderland" extension
4. Solarishpc.org
5. APSTC on SunSpace

B) Latest Publications, Technical Reports, Presentations and Briefs
1. Grid Discovery Zone: Virtualization for Exploiting Easy-management and High-utilization in Grid
2. Survey on Parallel Programming Model
3. Bioinformatics Applications Performance Analysis on AMD Opteron and UltraSPARC T2
4. InfiniBand Technology for High Performance Computing
5. Investigation on Indiana Project: Image Packaging System

C) News & Events Updates
1. Latest APSTC Events
2. Student Internship

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A) Projects & Developments Update

1. ClusterGrid
This new project can be seen as the new version of our BioClusterGrid CD.
Where BioClusterGrid CD was only focused on bio-applications, the ClusterGrid CD will have all the applications from different domains. (Bio, Math, MCAE)
The new CD is in development and we will be using GridSphere as the new Grid Portal.

2. Bio-LiveCD
The latest version is called BIONIX.
Bionix is BELENIX 0.4.4 remastered with integration of many bioinformatics applications. In Bionix, there are a complete operating environment based on Solaris platform with KDE. It includes additional feature of Solaris like ZFS, DTrace (Dynamic Tracing Framework), Zones and SMF (Service Management Framework).

Stay tuned: More work in on the way as we are planning to go native using OpenSolaris.
Using the new IPS packaging system and more.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/popup.php?l1=research&l2=projects&l3=livecd&f=overview)

3. Co Space "Project Wonderland" extension
Systems Practice APSTC is involved in a Co-Space funded (Singapore MDA and Sun Microsystems) project. We will use Project Wonderland, an open-source project created by Sun Labs, and contribute two frameworks.

Wonderland Framework for Sensor and Telemetry Integration
One of the most promising possible uses of virtual world technology such as Project Wonderland is using the virtual world to collaboratively monitor and interact with the real world. One way to do this is to instrument the real world, through the use of sensors and telemetry data, and bring that data into the virtual world in a way that groups of people can easily visualize, manipulate, and analyze the data.
This project would involve designing and building a Wonderland framework that would make it easy for developers to connect new sensors to Wonderland worlds. For example our SunSpots sensors.

Tool for Building Simulations within Wonderland Worlds
This project involves designing and developing an environment for building educational event based simulations within Wonderland worlds. The simulation framework would provide an easy way for programmers to create and texture programmatically generated objects along with artist-generated objects. An important aspect of this project is integrating a scripting feature for specifying how components in the simulation behave and the ways in which live users can interact with the components.

4. SolarisHPC.org Community website
The Singapore Polytechnic students have finished their final year project. They are touching up some last minute details and the site will be ready to launch. The website is not open for the public yet.
The website will have a forum, content management, video feed build in.
It will also have a members section.


B) Latest Publications, Technical Reports, Presentations and Briefs

Publications
1. Discovery Zone: Virtualization for Exploiting Easy-management and High-utilization in Grid, Yuxin Tang, Ruihua Zhang, Simon See, Che Cheung, Chi-Hung Chan, 2008 International Workshop on Parallel Algorithm and Parallel Software (IWPAPS'08), 25-27 September 2008, Beijing, China.
2. Survey on Parallel Programming Model, Henry Kasim, Verdi March, Rita Zhang & Simon See, IFIP International Conference on Network and Parallel Computing (IFIP 2008), 18-20 October 2008, Shanghai, China. For list of all publications, visit:
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources&l3=pubs)

Technical Reports
1. Bioinformatics Applications Performance Analysis on AMD Opteron and UltraSPARC T2, Henry Kasim, Deepak Jeevankumar, Simon See, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2008-03, 30 July 2008.
2. InfiniBand Technology for High Performance Computing, John Fragalla, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2008-02, 19 June 2008.
For list of all technical reports, visit:
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources&l3=techrep)

Technical Presentations
1. HPC Virtualization, Simon See, Technical Presentation APSTC-TP-2008-01, 4 November 2008

Technical Briefs
1. Investigation on Indiana Project: Image Packaging System, Neha Goel, Henry Kasim, APSTC-TB-2008-003.pdf
For list of all technical briefs, visit:
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources&l3=techbrief)


C) News & Events Updates

1) Latest APSTC Events
-. IFIP International Conference on Network and Parallel Computing (NPC 2008)
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#NPC2008)
-. The 10th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC-08)
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#HPCC08)

2) Student Internships
Fitriani CHUA, National University of Singapore
- Working on Application Performance Prediction & Modeling
Mayank MAHAJAN, Nanyang Technological University
- Working on SORMA project
- (Dorian) Grid service infrastructure component
WANG Gao, Nanyang Technological University
- Working on ClusterGrid Web Portal

APSTC e-Newsletter - June 2008 C-Issue# 6

SUMMARY
A) Projects & Developments Update
1. Clustergrid.org
2. Bio-LiveCD
3. Collaborative Treasure Hunt
4. Solarishpc.org

B) Latest Publications, Technical Reports and Briefs
1. A Case Study of HPL Benchmarking and Tuning
2. Sun Identity Manager for Grid User Management
3. National Cheng Kung University HPC Cluster: High Performance LINPACK Benchmark Report
4. Installation & Testing of Berkeley UPC
5. An Overview to Performance Prediction of Computer System
6. Bio-LiveCD: Bionix
7. Grid Discovery Zone

C) News & Events Updates
1. Latest APSTC Events
2. Student Internship
3. China Campus Ambassadors
4. India Campus Ambassadors

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A) Projects & Developments Update

1. Clustergrid.org
Clustergrid.org website is a community site that serves two purposes.

Firstly, it aims to aid novices users in setting up their Solaris x86 based clustergrids to run open source applications from different domains such as Life Sciences, MCAE and Math. Easy-to-use instructions and integration scripts for Sun Grid Engine & Grid Engine Portal are also provided.

Secondly, it provides a platform for users to contribute their integration scripts for the benefit of the community. In the long term we envision this website to popularize the use of Solaris x86 in the open source community.

At present, There are more than 20 applications available for download. Registration is required to download the applications binaries and applications integration scripts. Register now for free at: http://www.clustergrid.org/registration.php
(http://www.clustergrid.org).

2. Bio-LiveCD
Bio-LiveCD: A Bio-LiveCD, Bionix, is a CD that contains the Solaris Operating System, bio-informatics applications and other software stored on bootable CD-ROM that can be executed, without any installation on the hard drive. The name BIONIX has been derived by merging "Bioinformatics" and "Belenix". Bionix is remastered from BELENIX 0.4.4 after integrating some of the commonly used bioinformatics applications.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/popup.php?l1=research&l2=projects&l3=livecd&f=overview)

3. Collaborative Treasure Hunt
This is an unique initiative between Sun Microsystems, the Nanyang Technology University and the Temasek Polytechnic to develop a multi-player online gaming experience, with continuously challenging and evolving content. It has been developed on top of the Sun Java Gaming Server aka Project Darkstar. This enables to games to be run over a wide variety of end-user devices.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=researchareas&l3=gaming#p3)

The students in Temasek Polytechnic at Singapore have developed a game based on the Project Darkstar gaming platform. The game demo is made available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaMsToGEaEc

4. SolarisHPC.org Community website
The SolarisHPC is an open source community effort to facilitate the adoption of Sun Software by porting High Performance Computing applications to Solaris Operating System.

SolarisHPC provides ready to implement open source hpc applications for Solaris as well as all the applications and guides that you need to set up your own environment to do you own porting.

The Students in Singapore Polytechnic has start working on SolarisHPC website, which expected to be completed in July 2008. We will keep you updated on the next newsletter.


B) Latest Publications, Technical Reports and Briefs

Publications
1. Survey on the Application of Economic and Market Theory for Grid Computing, Xie Xia, Huang Jin, Wu Song, Jin Hai, Melvin Koh Chee Kian, Song Jie & Simon See, In Intelligence Integration in Distributed Knowledge Management, Ed. Dariusz Król and Ngoc Thanh Nguyen, 2008, Chapter 19.
2. Shared visualization - using centralized resources for remote 3D visualization on thin clients, Kling-Petersen, T., See, S., Commander, D., and Fellingham, L. (2008), In IberGrid 2008, F. Silva, B. Gaspar, and L. Riverio, eds. (Porto, Portugal, Netbiblo), pp. 347-356.
3. A Discriminatory Pay-as-Bid Mechanism for Efficient Scheduling in the Sun N1 Grid Engine, Jochen Stößer, Philipp Bodenbenner, Simon See, Dirk Neumann, In Proceedings of 41st Hawaii International International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS-41 2008), 7-10 January 2008, Waikoloa, Big Island, HI, USA.
For list of all publications, visit: http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources&l3=pubs

Technical Reports
1. A Case Study of HPL Benchmarking and Tuning, Verdi March, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2008-01, 07 Jan 2008.
2. Sun Identity Manager for Grid User Management, Lin Qianxia and Melvin Koh, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2007-02, 18 Oct 2007.
3. National Cheng Kung University HPC Cluster: High Performance LINPACK Benchmark Report, Verdi March and Melvin Koh, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2007-01, 10 May 2007.
For list of all technical reports, visit: http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources&l3=techrep

Technical Briefs
1. Installation & Testing of Berkeley UPC on Solaris 10 x64, Melvin Koh, Henry Kasim, APSTC-TB-2008-002.pdf
2. An Overview to Performance Prediction of Computer System, V. March, A.R. Singh, S. See, T. M. Teo, APSTC-TB-2008-001.pdf
3. Bio-LiveCD: Bionix, Henry K, Abhishek Pratap, Prateek Singh, APSTC-TB-2007-002.pdf
4. Grid Discovery Zone, Chan Chi Hung, Cheung Che Wing & Deepak, APSTC-TB-2007-001.pdf
For list of all technical briefs, visit: http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources&l3=techbrief


C) News & Events Updates

1) Latest APSTC Events
> Second Iberian Grid Infrastructure Conference
The Iberian Grid Infrastructure Conference is back. The Second IBERGRID conference is being organized by the University of Porto (U.PORTO) and will take place at its Faculty of Engineering, from 12 to 14 May 2008

The main goal of the IBERGRID'2008 conference is to constitute a forum where the advances in the development of grid infrastructures, technologies and applications are discussed by the main players in Iberian and Latin American countries. Site: http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=past#IBERGRID2008


> HPC and Grid Computing Events in China
One week events in China involve three members of the APSTC, Dr Simon See, Melvin Koh and Rita Zhang. This events include Round table discussion with the local universities, China ERC, setting up a Visualization booth, Sun Grid Engine and Lustre Workshop. In total there are more than 250 students and about 600 customers attended this events.

For more detail information about this events, visit: http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=past#hpcChina


> International Symposium on Grid Computing 2008
ISGC is one of the most significant annual events in Asia Pacific that brings together scientists and engineers worldwide to exchange ideas, present on challenges, solutions and future development issues in the field of Grid Computing.

Mr Melvin Koh, from APSTC, Sun Microsystems was invited to give a talk on Sun's On-demand computing using Network.com during the Industry Session. Site: http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=past#isgc2008


> Sun HPC Briefing at UQ
Sun Australia HPC Grid Workshop at UQ was jointly hosted by Sun Microsystems Australia and APSTC.

Dr Simon See, from APSTC, Sun Microsystems Together with Kevin Mayo and Richard Smith from Sun Microsystems, have brought to the audience, the update on the Supercomputing 2007 (SC07) conference and Sun Microsystems HPC product lines and technology road maps. Site: http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=past#uqsunhpc


2) Student Internships
APSTC partners with local and overseas academic institutions in nurturing students via our internship program. Some of these students joined the center as part of their school's industrial attachment requirement for three months to a year. The list of the students who involved in APSTC student internships:
> Edwin Lesmana TJIONG, Nanyang Technological University
> Vijayaraghavan MURALI, National University of Singapore
> Xuchuan LI, National University of Singapore


3) China Campus Ambassadors
APSTC has on going collaboration with China ERI HPC group. The list of campus ambassadors who are working on APSTC projects are:
> Eric ZHANG, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
> Dongmao ZHANG, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
> Lizhu ZHANG, Tsinghua University
> Robin TANG, Chinese Academy of Science
> Vincent DING, South China University of Technology
> Yuping WEI, Tsinghua University
> Zheng WEI, Beijing University of Industry


4) India Campus Ambassadors
Recently, APSTC has start the collaboration with Sun India. In this collaborations, there are several Campus Ambassadors who have been assigned and are interested in getting involve with some of the HPC projects. Below are the list of the Campus ambassadors and Interns:
> Diwakar JHA, NIT Hamirpur
> Moutupsi PAUL, NIT Silchar
> Prabit MISHRA, NIT Rourkela
> S.A.Thirunavukkarasu, Madras Institute of Technology

APSTC e-Newsletter - March 2007 C-Issue# 5

SUMMARY
A) News & Events Updates
1. APSTC New Team Members
2. New Associate Members
3. APSTC Technical Review 2007
4. Talks

B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments
1. Collaborative Treasure Hunt
2. Project Update: Grid Discovery Zone
3. New Project: SORMA - Self-Organizing ICT Resource Management

C) Latest Publications, Technical Reports and Briefs
1. Information Management and GUI for Solaris HPC Cluster Deployment
2. Automatic Application Performance Tuning Tools
3. Survey on the Application of Economic and Market Theory for Grid Computing

D) Upcoming Events

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A) News & Events Updates
1. APSTC New Team Members
A warm welcome to the new APSTC members:
- Khoo Bing Jin joined in October 2006
- Cheung Che Wing joined in December 2006
- Verdi March joined in January 2007

2. New Assoicate Members
A warm welcome to the new member(s) of our Associate Membership Programme:
- Seah Khim Leng, Richard
- Lam Foong Onn, Lionel

3. APSTC Technical Review 2007
The APSTC Technical Review Meeting is held annually in Singapore. The objective of this meeting is to provide a forum for APSTC’s research collaborators across Asia to share their latest research, results, ideas, developments, techniques and applications in all areas of Grid and Large Scale Computing. This year, it was held on 22 Jan 2007 at the Sun Solution Center Level 6, Sun Microsystems Pte Ltd, Singapore. Among the guest speakers, we had Mr. Dennis Sng and Mr. Chan Chi Hung from Frontline Technologiesy who gave an update on the Grid Project which APSTC has engaged with. We were also honoured Ms. Linda Lin and Ms. Rita Zhang from SUN China and APSTC China to shared their porjects with us.

The presentation slides are now available at our website.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#techreview07)

4. Talks
Dr. Simon See Chong Wee has given a talk on "Towards Petascale" at one of Israel prestigious university, University of Technion on 28th Jan 2007.
On the Grid event in Israel, Dr. Simon See Chong Wee has also given a talk on "Sun HPC and Grid Technology".

B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments
1. Collaborative Treasure Hunt
A unique initiative between Sun Microsystems, Nanyang Technological University and Temasek Polytechnics to develop a multiplayer online gaming experience, with continuously challenging and evolving content, independent of the device used for the participation, developed on top of the Sun Java Gaming Server, or Project Darkstar.

SUN has taken interest in the Collaborative Treasure Hunt. APSTC is currently working with SUN for funding potentials from MDA. While presentations are being to potential collaborators, developments are actively carried in the participating institutions.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=researchareas&l3=gaming#p3)

2. Project Update: Grid Discovery Zone
The Grid Discovery Zone is an initiative between Sun Microsystems Inc, Frontline Technologies and National Grid Office to set up a comprehensive compute and storage grid facility and infrastructure. This compute farm known as the Grid Discovery Zone aims at providing researchers and engineers with a rich high performance computing environment, equipped with state-of-the-art massive storage and compute power for a variety of industry tracks, including but not limited to: Software Development, Digital Media and Life Sciences.

Digital Media and Software Development program has launched! Check them out at (http://apstc.sun.com.sg/discovery)

Life Sciences are targeting to be released in 22nd January 2007.

3. New Project: SORMA - Self-Organizing ICT Resource Management
SORMA is a EU funded project whose objective is to develop a platform that allows the dynamic trading of ICT resources "on-demand". This platform is supposed to not only support the trading itself, but also the fulfillment of purchased resources. The project consortium comprises 12 partners including Sun APSTC, who are working on Security and Trust Management aspect of the SORMA platform.

Public Access - SORMA Project website: (http://www.iw.uni-karlsruhe.de/sormang/ )

C) Latest Publications, Technical Reports and Briefs

Technical Report
1. Information Management and GUI for Solaris HPC Cluster Deployment, TAN Yong Sheng, TSANG Yuk Wai, LAM Wei Chao, Simon SEE Chong Wee Technical Report APSTC-TR-2006-007.pdf, 13 December 2006.

2. Survey on the Application of Economic and Market Theory for Grid Computing, Xie Xia, Huang Jin, Wu Song, Jin Hai, Melvin Koh Chee Kian, Song Jie, Simon See, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2006-005.pdf, 30 August 2006.

Documents are listed on Public Access - APSTC website
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources)

D) Upcoming Events

SunHPC 2007, March 12 - March 16, 2007
RWTH Aachen University, Center for Computing and Communication
Aachen, Germany
For more information, please visit http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/sunhpc

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APSTC Website: http://apstc.sun.com.sg

APSTC e-Newsletter - August 2006 C-Issue# 4

SUMMARY
A) News & Events Updates
1. APSTC in the News
2. Sun HPC Consortium 2006 - Singapore
3. Grid Asia 2006
4. Sun China HPC Grid Workshop at Renmin University
5. Seminar at NLB: Grid - A Tool for Science and Business

B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments
1. Project Update: Grid Market Project
2. New Sub-Project: GridSearch

C) Latest Publications, Technical Reports and Briefs

D) Upcoming Events
1. Sun Australia HPC Seminar
2. Sun India HPC Seminar

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A) News & Events Updates

1. APSTC in the News
In the recent months, APSTC received coverage in the local news:
a. 17 May - APSTC to Pioneer Usage of Grid Discovery Zone Launched by Sun in Singapore
b. 16 May - Digital Life Article: Pool Your Computing Resources
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=news&l3=recent)

2. Sun HPC Consortium 2006 - Singapore
The Sun High Performance Computing Consortium (SPHCC) meeting was held on 14–15 May 2006 as part of the Pre-GridAsia 2006 Program. The event co-hosted by APSTC at the Singapore Management University, saw attendees coming from Asia, Europe and US. Among the guest speakers, the talk on "The Flight of TSUBAME --- a 100 TeraFLOPS Cluster so that Everyone Supercomputes" given by Prof Satoshi Matsuoka from Tokyo Institute of Technology was a highlight at the consortium. A reception dinner was thrown for the attendees who truly enjoyed the evening as it turned out to be an unique and exotic experience for most. Some of the event pictures and presentation slides have been uploaded to the website.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#shpcc06)

3. Grid Asia 2006
GridAsia 2006 is a series with the Grid Computing theme that hosted a combination of international events such as CCGrid, regional events such as the South East Asia Grid Forum and local events such as Life Science, Digital Media, Manufacturing and Physical Science symposia. The Industry track featured the 3rd International Workshop on Grid Economics and Business Model (GECON), workshops and panel discussions. The exhibition track featured solutions, products and applications from vendors that provided a glimpse of how Grid can apply to the industry. APSTC participated in GridAsia 2006 by:
- presenting papers at CCGrid and GECON,
- presenting "Bioinformatics on Open Solaris" at the APBioNet Workshop,
- conducting N1GE & DRMAA Tutorial for signed up attendees of the CCGrid Tutorial Workshop
- and assisting Barton Friske in demonstrating Visualization solutions
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#gridasia06)

4. Sun China HPC Grid Workshop at Renmin University
Following the success of the Sun Australia HPC Grid Workshop at UQ, Sun Microsystems China, APSTC and Renmin University organized a similar workshop at China-ERC 2006. Together with Renmin University and APSTC, Sun Microsystems brought to the audience, the latest information in practical use of HPC and Grid. Attendees of the workshop learnt from some institutions, how they are making it a reality for their scientists by setting up their own Sun Grid. Some of the event pictures have been uploaded to the website.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#renminhpc)

5. Seminar at NLB: Grid - A Tool for Science and Business
Over the recent year, there has been a lot of progress in the development of Grid technology, middleware and application. Grid, started of with the idea of sharing resources for scientists, has slowly beginning to impact the commercial segment. Invited by the National Grid Office, Singapore, Dr. Simon See gave a talk on Grid - A Tool for Science and Business to discuss how scientists, engineers and commercial users are using the Grid.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#nlbseminar)


B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments

1. Project Update: Grid Market Project
The purpose of this research project is to build a framework based on a market-economy approach to support new business models for Grid services. This project is aimed at providing the necessary building blocks for commercial implementation by business/scientific entities. The Project webpage has been updated with more information on the Grid Market Information System. New technical report and presentation slides on the topic of "Private and Identity Management for Grid Market" has been made available on the Sun Grid Developer Network website.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/gridmarket)
Sun Grid Developer Network website:
(https://grid-market-framework.developer.network.com)

2. New Sub-Project: GridSearch
GridSearch is a sub-project of the Grid Market Project. To facilitate the publication and discovery mechanisms in an Information System, APSTC developed a generic P2P search framework called GridSearch. The framework will be used as the underlying query infrastructure for supporting Grid service discovery. GridSearch 0.1a source codes are now downloadable from the CVS repository in the Sun Grid Developer Network website. The source codes can be built using Netbeans or just using Apache Ant, and all the required libraries (Jar files) can be found in the CVS. User guides and tutorial will be made available soon!
Sun Grid Developer Network website:
(https://gridsearch.developer.network.com/)


C) Latest Publications, Technical Reports and Briefs

Publications
1. A Market-Based Framework for Trading Grid Resources, Melvin Koh, Jie Song, Liang Peng & Simon See, The 3rd International Workshop on Grid Economics and Business Models - GECON 2006, Singapore, 16 May 2006.

2. Service Registry Discovery using GridSearch P2P Framework, Melvin Koh, Jie Song, Liang Peng & Simon See, CCGrid06 - 6th International Workshop on Global and Peer-to-Peer Computing: Theory and Experience of Desktop Grids and P2P systems, Singapore, 16-19 May 2006.

3. A Co-ordinate Based Resource Allocation Strategy for Grid Environments, Benjamin Khoo Boon Tat, Bharadwaj Veeravalli, Terence Hung & Simon See, CCGrid06 - Resource Management & Scheduling, Singapore, 16-19 May 2006.

Technical Report
1. Identity and Privacy Management for Grid Service Market, Satish Chathapuram V, Teo Yong Meng, Melvin Koh Chee Kian, Jie Song & Simon See, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2006-004, 01 August 2006.

2. N1GE6 Proof-of-Concept in Electronic Design Automation: Experience and Summary Report, Melvin Koh Chee Kian & Kian Chau Ng, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2006-003, 21 July 2006.

3. Pirate Treasure Hunt Game, Liang Chen, Loi Hun Chiu, Bing Jin Khoo, Abele Stoelwinder & Simon See, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2006-002, 16 July 2006.

Technical Brief
1. Porting of Voltaire MPI onto Sun Studio 11 for Linux, Lip-Kian Ng, APSTC-TB-2006-002.pdf

Full listing of documents are published on APSTC website. Some of the documents can be emailed to you upon request (http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources)


D) Upcoming Events

1. Sun Australia HPC Seminar
9-11 August 2006 - Australia
* 09 Aug 06 - Griffith University, Brisbane
* 10 Aug 06 - Dimension Data, Melbourne
* 11 Aug 06 - Australian Centre for Advanced Computing and Communications, Sydney
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#aushpc06)

2. Sun India HPC Seminar
23-24 August 2006 - India
* 23 Aug 06 - Taj Krishna, Hyderabad
* 24 Aug 06 - Taj West End, Bangalore
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#indhpc06)

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APSTC Website: http://apstc.sun.com.sg

APSTC e-Newsletter - April 2006 C-Issue# 3

SUMMARY
A) News & Events Updates
1. SUN@NUS'06 - An event organized by the Sun Campus Evangelists
2. Sun/APSTC Visit by Delegation of Baden-Wurttemberg IT-Study-Tour to Singapore
3. Sun Australia HPC Grid Workshop at UQ
4. New APSTC Associate Members
5. Registration for Sun HPC Consortium 2006 and GridAsia 2006 is now open

B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments
1. Project Update: BCG 1.4 Update 2 is now available for ROCKS 3.3.0.
2. Project Update: SSC World Grid Project
3. Project Update: Grid Engine Portal

C) Latest Technical Reports and Briefs

D) Upcoming Events
1. SHPCC - Singapore 2006
2. GridAsia 2006

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A) News & Events Updates

1. SUN@NUS'06 - An event organized by the Sun Campus Evangelists
The Sun Campus Evangelist Program is a key component of Sun's Academic Initiative and is designed to drive adoption of Sun's technologies and development tools among academic developers with a particular focus on students. SUN@NUS'06 is a two-hour seminar held on the evening of 29 March 2006. This event is part of Sun & APSTC interns' effort as Sun Campus Evangelists to promote Sun technologies, particularly in HPTC and Grid Computing. The Evangelists plan to kick start a Sun community which will eventually be run by students within campus.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#sunnus06)

2. Sun/APSTC Visit by Delegation of Baden-Wurttemberg IT-Study-Tour to Singapore
On 31st March 2006, APSTC hosted the delegation of Baden-Wurttemberg IT-Study-Tour during their trip to Singapore. Members of the delegation spent the morning session at the Sun Solution Center where they were given a series of presentations on Sun & APSTC, Grid and Portal technologies cum demonstrations. In the afternoon, the delegation were brought to the local universities and research institute where the respective hosts gave presentations and conducted short tours to the laboratories.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#mar31visit)

3. Sun Australia HPC Grid Workshop at UQ
Sun Microsystems Australia and APSTC organized a HPC Grid Workshop at University of Queensland in collaboration with The Centre for Computational Molecular Science (CCMS, UQ). During the event, Sun's latest hardware and software technologies focused on HPC and Grid were discussed. Other than having speakers from Sun, APSTC and UQ, there were invited speakers from James Cook University and Griffith University who shared their experiences in managing Sun HPC clusters and meeting their diverse user requirements.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#uqhpc)

4. New APSTC Associate Members
A warm welcome to the new members of our Associate Membership Programme:
- Dr. Marlies Hankel, University of Queensland (UQ)
- Prof. Sean Smith, University of Queensland (UQ)
- Mr. Justin Choo, National University of Singapore (NUS)
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=about&l2=members#assocmbr)

5. Registration for Sun HPC Consortium 2006 and GridAsia 2006 is now open
Calling all Sun scientific, engineering, or research computing customers or anyone interested in high-performance computing on Sun technologies. The next big event for Sun's science, engineering and HPC customers is coming up on May 14-15 in Singapore. The Sun HPC Consortium will be held prior to GridAsia 2006 at the School of Accountancy, Singapore Management University. We will have two days of general talks and Special Interest Groups (SIGs). There will be talks from Sun and AMD as well as customers on the many different challenges facing Universities and Research Institutions to carry on state-of-the-art computational science and engineering today. Each meeting is designed to address a wide range of interests from application developers to CIOs and VPs of Research. For complete information on the event, and on-line registration, visit http://events-at-sun.com/hpc-singapore2006

GridAsia 2006 is a series with the Grid Computing theme that caters to everyone, from the interested individuals, practitioners and user organizations in industry to the research and development community. Into its second year, GridAsia promises to be an exciting major annual event for the region. It aims to bring together researchers and practitioners in Grid Computing as well as related technologies and applications.
On-line registration at http://webapp.ngp.org.sg/gridasia/


B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments

1. Project Update: BCG 1.4 Update 2 is now available for ROCKS 3.3.0.
A rocks roll for Bio-ClusterGrid has been developed in collaboration with South China University of Technology - Network Center (SCUT-NC) under the ChinaGrid project. It enables administrators to set up a fully functional bioinformatics cluster (accessible through a portal) in minimal time. Latest version available:
Version 1.4 Update 2 for ROCKS 3.3.0
* Java Enterprise System Portal Server 2005Q4
* Sun Grid Engine 5.3
* Bioinformatics application binaries roll
* Bioinformatics applications integration scripts
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/go/bcg)

2. Project Update: SSC World Grid Project
The Sun Solution Center World Grid, formerly known as iForce Solution Center World Grid is intended as a demonstration platform for Grid Computing related technologies. This is a solution that is continuously evolving by constantly deploying new demonstration tools and improving the underlying architecture. Throughout the scope of this project, new centers could be added with very little configuration efforts and provide close collaborators with a showcase environment for their Grid and HPC related technologies, as well as creating a truly unique environment for customers to experience the power and convenience of Grid Computing.

The solution was demonstrated at the world-wide SSC event, in early March 2006 by Brian Tan, lead SSC point-of-contact for the SSC World Grid project. He is furthermore responsible for promoting the solution and encouraging several sites around the world (currently Newark, England, France and Singapore) to become part of this exciting project.

For more information on the included technology or the most recent status update of this project, please visit the project website. (http://apstc.sun.com.sg/go/sscwg)

3. Project Update: Grid Engine Portal
Grid Engine Portal (GEP) is the web interface to Grid Engine http://gridengine.sunsource.net/. It is a servlet that runs on top of Sun Java System Portal Server (formerly known as Sun One Portal Server) and provides users with a mouse-driven interface to submit and run their jobs. This interface is very useful for users who are not familiar with the command line interface of the Grid Engine but who still want a reasonable amount of control over how their jobs is run.

APSTC has incorporated numerous enhancements to the original GEP code to increase its functionality as well as user-friendliness, including the option to select specific hosts for execution of jobs, MPI support and automatic project directory creation. The Grid Engine Portal is now available for free, Installation instructions and packages will be available on the website in the near future.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=projects&l3=gep)


C) Latest Technical Reports and Briefs

Technical Report
1. Collaborative Grid for Simulation-based Design, Gaurav Jain, Fan Liqing, Bok Shung Hwee, Abele Stoelwinder & Simon See, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2006-001, 1 February 2006.

Technical Brief
1. Data Transport and Sharing for Collaborative Manufacturing Industry, Mr Gaurav Jain, APSTC-TB-2006-001.pdf

Full listing of documents are published on APSTC website. Some of the documents can be emailed to you upon request (http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources)


D) Upcoming Events

1. SHPCC, Sun High Performance Computing Consortium - Singapore 2006
14-15 May 2006 - Singapore Management University, Singapore
The SHPCC is part of the Pre-GridAsia 2006 Program.
http://events-at-sun.com/hpc-singapore2006

2. GridAsia 2006
16-19 May 2006 - Singapore Management University, Singapore
http://www.ngp.org.sg/gridasia/2006/

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APSTC Website: http://apstc.sun.com.sg

APSTC e-Newsletter - January 2006 C-Issue# 2

SUMMARY
A) News & Events Updates
1. 2nd APSTC Technical Review Meeting
2. APSTC Associate Membership Programme
3. MIMOS HPTC and Grid Skills Building Program

B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments
1. Project Update: Rocks roll for Bio-ClusterGrid!
2. New Applications added to Solaris 10 Application Migration Webpage

C) Latest Publications and Technical Briefs

D) Upcoming Events
1. GPC'2006
2. SHPCC - Singapore 2006
3. Grid Asia 2006

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A) News & Events Updates

1. 2nd APSTC Technical Review Meeting
The APSTC Technical Review Meeting is held annually in Singapore. The objective of this meeting is to provide a forum for APSTC’s research collaborators across Asia to share their latest research, results, ideas, developments, techniques and applications in all areas of Grid and Large Scale Computing. This year, it was held on 11 Jan 2006 at the Sheraton Towers Singapore. Among the guest speakers, we had Dr. Rosni Abdullah representing Universiti Sains Malaysia and Dr. Putchong Uthayopas from Kasetsart University who gave an update on the research activities at APSTF Malaysia and APSTF Thailand respectively. We were also honoured to have Dr. Alistair Rendell from Australian National University and Dr. Yoshio Takana from AIST, Japan who shared some of the interesting research projects that their teams are working on.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=events&l3=latest#techreview06)

2. APSTC Associate Membership Programme
APSTC has recently launched a unique invite-only Associate Membership Programme. This programme brings together our most valued contacts in the Grid and HPTC industry to enable interesting discussions, sharing of information, recruiting of resources, obtaining expertise, but also to facilitate collaborations in various projects or even outsourcing of activities.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=about&l2=members#assocmbr)

3. MIMOS HPTC and Grid Skills Building Program
In 2005, the Malaysian government embarked on a National Grid Computing initiative to boost research and development by pooling computing resources in local universities and research institutions. As a result, MIMOS - a leading, Government-owned, R&D organisation specializing in the areas of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) and Microelectronics proposed a Grid Computing roadmap. MIMOS launched the MIMOS HPTC and Grid Skills Building Program to promote, develop and train personnel in the effective use of Grid Computing Technology. APSTC's role was to assist MIMOS in providing training in this specialized technical area.


B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments

1. Project Update: Rocks roll for Bio-ClusterGrid!
A rocks roll for Bio-ClusterGrid is ready. This has been developed in collaboration with South China University of Technology (SCUT) under the ChinaGrid project. It enables administrators to set up a fully functional portal accessible based bioinformatics cluster in minimal time. Currently, this is available for ROCKS 3.3.0 (AMD64) only.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/go/bcg)

2. New Applications added to Solaris 10 Application Migration Webpage
Project objective is to create and maintain a central repository of applications which have been ported over to the Solaris 10 x64 platform. This is to enable easy download access by the general public. The list of new applications are as follows:

a. R v2.2.0
- R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.

b. Octave v2.9.4
- GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations.

c. FFTW v3.0.1
- FFTW is a C subroutine library for computing the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) in one or more dimensions, of arbitrary input size, and of both real and complex data (as well as of even/odd data, i.e. the discrete cosine/sine transforms or DCT/DST).

d. GPLK v4.8
- The GLPK (GNU Linear Programming Kit) package is intended for solving large-scale linear programming (LP), mixed integer programming (MIP), and other related problems. It is a set of routines written in ANSI C and organized in the form of a callable library.

e. METIS v4.0
- METIS is a family of programs for partitioning unstructured graphs and hypergraphs and computing fill-reducing orderings of sparse matrices.

f. UFsparse (Dec.8, 2005 release)
- A set of sparse matrix algorithm library from the University of Florida.

g. HDF5 v1.6.5
- HDF5 is a general purpose library and file format for storing scientific data.

h. readline v5.0

i. GD v2.0.33
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=projects&l3=s10port)


C) Latest Publications and Technical Briefs

Publications
1. Packet Triplet; A Novel Approach to Estimate path Capacity, Zou Zixuan, Bu Sung Lee, Cheng Peng Fu & Jie Song, IEEE Communications Letters, Vol. 9, No. 12, December 2005, pp. 1076-1078.

2. YellowRiver: A Flexible High Performance Cluster Computing Service for Grid, Liang Peng, Lip Kian Ng & Simon See, In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia-Pacific Region (HPCAsia 2005), IEEE Computer Society Press, Beijing, 30 November-3 December 2005.

3. Integration of Parallel MM5 with Distributed Resource Manager and Performance Evaluation, Melvin Koh, Liang Peng & Simon See, In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia-Pacific Region (HPCAsia 2005), IEEE Computer Society Press, Beijing, 30 November-3 December 2005.

4. Performance Investigation of Weighted Meta-scheduling Algorithm for Scientific Grid, Jie Song, Chee-Kian Koh, Simon See & Gay Kheng Leng, To be Published in the 4th International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing (GCC), Beijing, 29 November-04 December 2005.

5. Grid Workflow Management System, J. Song, J. Singh, C. K. Koh, Y. S. Ong & C. W. See, International Journal on Information Technology (IJIT), Singapore, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 50-57.

6. Performance Monitoring for Distributed Service Oriented Grid Architecture, Liang Peng, Melvin Koh, Jie Song, & Simon See, In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing (ICA3PP2005), Lecture Notes of Computer Science (LNCS3719), Melbourne, Australia, 2-5 October 2005.

Technical Briefs
1. Testing MVAPICH-uDAPL with Voltaire IB on Solaris 10 x64, Liang Peng, Lip Kian Ng, APSTC-TB-2005-005.pdf

Full listing of documents are published on APSTC website. Some of the documents can be emailed to you upon request (http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources)


D) Upcoming Events

1. GPC'2006, The First International Conference on Grid and Pervasive Computing
3-5 May 2006 - Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan
http://hpc.csie.thu.edu.tw/gpc2006/

2. SHPCC, Sun High Performance Computing Consortium - Singapore 2006
14-15 May 2006 - Singapore Management University, Singapore
The SHPCC is part of the Pre-Grid Asia 2006 Program.

3. Grid Asia 2006
16-19 May 2006 - Singapore Management University, Singapore
http://www.ngp.org.sg/gridasia/2006/

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APSTC Website: http://apstc.sun.com.sg

APSTC e-Newsletter - September 2005 C-Issue# 1

SUMMARY
A) News & Events Updates
1. About APSTC
2. Sun's Large Scale Computing and Grid Computing Weblinks Compiled
3. New, Improved Grid Training focus on Real-world Scenarios
4. Call for Papers: The Third High-Performance Grid Computing Workshop (HPGC)

B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments
1. New Project: Grid Market Project
2. Solaris 10 Application Migration Webpage has been updated with new applications.
3. Recommended Simulation Tools

C) Latest Publications, Technical Reports and Briefs

D) Upcoming Events
1. SC|05
2. HPC Asia 2005
3. e-Science 2005 Conference

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A) News & Events Updates

1. About APSTC
Established in 2002, Sun's Asia Pacific Science and Technology Center (APSTC), focuses primarily on growing expertise in Grid Computing and High Performance Computing. APSTC works closely with various scientific & engineering communities, particularly with the academic and research institutions in the Asia Pacific region.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/about)

2. Sun's Large Scale Computing and Grid Computing Weblinks Compiled
Knowledge is power but where can you find all the information that you want on Sun's Large Scale Computing and Grid Computing? We have compiled a preliminary list of weblinks for your convenience and will add more whenever available.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources&l3=links)

3. New, Improved Grid Training focus on Real-world Scenarios
APSTC is collaborating with Sun Education (Singapore) and the National Grid Office (Singapore) in organizing joint Grid training courses that are targeted at the industry users.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=activities&l2=news&l3=recent#ngcctraining)

4. Call for Papers: The Third High-Performance Grid Computing Workshop (HPGC)
April 29, 2006, Rhodes Island, Greece in conjunction with The 20th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium - IPDPS'2006
For more information, visit http://www.cs.unb.ca/profs/aubanel/hpgc/


B) Technical Updates: New projects & developments

1. New Project: Grid Market Project
The purpose of this research project is to build a framework based on a market-economy approach to support new business models for Grid services. This project is aimed at providing the necessary building blocks for commercial implementation by business/scientific entities.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=projects&l3=gridmarket)

2. Solaris 10 Application Migration Webpage has been updated with new applications.
Project objective is to create and maintain a central repository of applications which have been ported over to the Solaris 10 x64 platform. This is to enable easy download access by the general public.
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=projects&l3=s10port)

3. Recommended Simulation Tools
- GridSim Toolkit 3.1
- OptorSim 2.0
- Simgrid 2.9.3
(http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=projects&l3=supsched)


C) Latest Publications, Technical Reports and Briefs

Publications
1. Sensor Grid: Integration of Wireless Sensor Networks and the Grid, H. B. Lim, Y. M. Teo, P. Mukherjee, V. T. Lam, W. F. Wong & S. See, The IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN 2005), Sydney, Australia, 15-17 November 2005.

Technical Reports
1. A Proposed Simple Grid Market Framework - Part I, Jie Song, Melvin Koh, Liang Peng & Simon See, Technical Report APSTC-TR-2005-001, 8 August 2005.

Technical Briefs
1. Using MPICH-G2 in Solaris Container, Melvin Koh, APSTC-TB-2005-004.pdf
2. Using GridWay on Solaris 10 with Globus Toolkit 4.0, Melvin Koh, APSTC-TB-2005-003.pdf
3. LSF Migration to Grid Engine using LSF-SGE Gateway, Melvin Koh & Poh Guan Khoo, APSTC-TB-2005-002.pdf

Full listing of documents are published on APSTC website. Some of the documents can be emailed to you upon request (http://apstc.sun.com.sg/content.php?l1=research&l2=resources)


D) Upcoming Events

1. SC|05, International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, and Storage
12-18 Nov 2005 - Washington State Convention and Trade Center Seattle, WA, USA
http://sc05.supercomputing.org/

2. HPC Asia 2005, The 8th International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia Pacific Region
30 Nov-3 Dec 2005 - Beijing International Convention Center , Beijing, China
http://www.ict.ac.cn/hpcasia2005/

3. e-Science 2005 Conference, International Conference on e-Science and Grid Technologies
5-8 Dec 2005 - Melbourne, Australia
http://www.gridbus.org/escience

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APSTC Website: http://apstc.sun.com.sg