The Home Pages of Project Sinergia

to the home pages of

PROJECT SINERGIA

Welcome to the home pages of Project Sinergia. The word sinergia is portuguese for synergy, the definition of which closely represents the objectives of this collaborative project in the context of Grid Computing.

So what's in a name?

syn·er·gy n. pl. syn·er·gies

[http://dictionary.com]

[1] The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
Our interpretation:
Collaboration is the basis for doing things never done before, i.e. solving new problems.

[2] Cooperative interaction among groups that creates an enhanced combined effect.
Our interpretation:
Collaboration can help to do things better, i.e. solving problems faster or more efficiently.

INTRODUCTION

Computational Grids have the potential to become the standard (high performance) computing platform used by both the scientific and business communities. The objective of computational grids is to coordinate shared, distributed heterogeneous resources to work as a single computational resource. The availability of such an environment opens new horizons for research in areas previously unexplored or limited for economic or impractical reasons. Computational grids can also be viewed as an alternative to expensive supercomputers, making high performance computing more accessible especially to users who do not possess sufficient resources locally. Easy access to computational power gives a much larger community of users than before the opportunity to solve computational problems. Unfortunately, efficiently harnessing the performance potential of such systems (i.e. how and where applications should execute on the grid) is a challenging endeavor due principally to the distributed, shared and heterogeneous nature of the resources involved. If Grid Computing is to fulfill its potencial, then the development of efficient grid applications must be made easier.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

This project aims to focus on providing non grid specialised scientists a complete and user friendly grid computing environment through an integrated approach to grid infrastructure (the individual software and hardware components, integrated to form a physical network of resources), middleware (tools to control and manage both the grid infrastructure and applications) and application (developed and optimised to take advantage of a grid's shared distributed resources) developement. The objective is to simplify the use of grid tecnology, and thus help accelerate the development of applications and software which exploit the benefits available from Grid Computing.

This project aims to:

Install and operate the Grid Sinergia Computational Grid infrastructure using resources provided by participating project partners, institutions and other collaborators.
Develop new and novel grid middleware to facilitate the efficient and robust execution of scientific applications on the infrastructure available; and
Specify appropriate programming paradigms and tecniques to allow scientific applications to benefit from grid computing and in particular grid infrastructures which possess a high speed interconnections.

PROJECT SPONSORS

Both the project itself and members of the project gratefully acknowledge the support from the following institutions:

		Institution
		The Grid Sinergia Initiative is partially funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq). Apoio CNPq, Lei 8.248/91 e 10.176/01 - LEI DE INFORMÁTICA - CTINFO.
		Rede National de Pesquisa (RNP).