Distributed Simulation (A7)
Project PI: Kathleen Barber
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The Institute for the Simulation of Information and Tech-nology-driven Enterprises (INSITE) delivers modeling and simulation environments to supports rapid decision-making. Distributed computing for simulation is a major thrust area of this research institute. Intel equipment provided as part of this equipment grant will form the primary computation platform for the institute.
TECHNICAL CHALLENGES
INSITE's goals are to develop simulation infrastruc-ture and model-development tools through intensive university research and active col-laborations with industrial partners. The enabling technologies to be pursued include 1) interoperability between simulators and portability of simulation models, 2) security models for integrating simulation components from different companies (such capability will be especially useful in consortium environments such as SEMATECH), 3) application of high-speed network technology to support lightweight event pro-tocols and high-performance distributed computing, and 4) integration of distributed ob-ject technology (e.g., CORBA, Java) to provide robust simulation environments.
IMPACT
INSITE is a newly-organized, high-profile research institute that enjoys collaboration and par-ticipation across many of the traditional university domains. The core theme, technology and frameworks for simulation, supports both industry and academic objectives. Initial industry participants in the institute include National Semiconductor, Motorola, Lockheed Martin, 3M, and Schlumberger. Government agencies involved in the institute include the US Air Force through Wright Laboratories. Intel's equipment donation establishes the Intel architecture as the predominant computation base for the institute.
EQUIPMENT
The equipment needs for INSITE can be categorized in three areas. Most of these areas will be the primary computation engine, as a showcase of 14 Quad servers, 8 Dual Processors and 12 Pentium Pro workstations. Supplementing the primary computation engine will be the experimental simulation testbed, another cluster upon which simulation technology will be developed and tested.
RESOURCES
INSITE is based in a 5000 square foot dedicated facility in the College of Engineer-ing at the University of Texas at Austin's main campus. INSITE will leverage the Intel contribution of computing equipment with networking equipment available through three sources. Foremost among these sources is the Networking and Software Engineering Laboratory (NeaSEL). NeaSEL has switching and routing capabilities for 155Mbps ATM. Other sources for networking equipment and computer support include funded research within INSITE.
BENEFITS TO INTEL
The distributed simulation and distributed computing research conducted at INSITE will have the following bene-fits to Intel: 1) Showcase Intel processors solving computationally intensive simulation problems, 2) Develop and transfer Intel-validated simulation technology to INSITE in-dustrial collaborators, and 3) Identify performance bottlenecks, security loopholes and ease-of-use issues for large-scale distributed computation with Intel processors.
RELATED WEB SITES
Please visit the Distributed Simulation Project Web site for more information.