TeraGrid: Analysis of Organization, System Architecture, and Middleware Enabling New Types of Applications

Abstract

TeraGrid is a national-scale computational science facility supported through a partnership among thirteen institutions, with funding from the US Na- tional Science Foundation [1]. Initially created through a Major Research Equip- ment Facilities Construction (MREFC [2]) award in 2001, the TeraGrid facility began providing production computing, storage, visualization, and data collections services to the national science, engineering, and education community in January 2004. In August 2005 NSF funded a five-year program to operate, enhance, and expand the capacity and capabilities of the TeraGrid facility to meet the growing needs of the science and engineering community through 2010. This paper de- scribes TeraGrid in terms of the structures, architecture, technologies, and services that are used to provide national-scale, open cyberinfrastructure. The focus of the paper is specifically on the technology approach and use of middleware for the purposes of discussing the impact of such approaches on scientific use of compu- tational infrastructure. While there are many individual science success stories, we do not focus on these in this paper. Similarly, there are many software tools and systems deployed in TeraGrid but our coverage is of the basic system middleware and is not meant to be exhaustive of all technology efforts within TeraGrid. We look in particular at growth and events during 2006 as the user population ex- panded dramatically and reached an initial “tipping point” with respect to adoption of new “grid” capabilities and usage modalities.