National Grid – Beyond R&D to Industry Adoption

1. National Grid –Beyond R&D to Industry Adoption e-Science Workshop18 Jul 2006

2. National Grid Mission to facilitate the seamless use of an integrated cyber infrastructure in a secure, effective & efficient manner to advance scientific, engineering & biomedical R&D, with the longer term goal of transforming the Singapore economy using grid

3. Resource Usage by Domains(Apr 2005 – Mar 2006)

4. PC Grids • Beyond vacation camp … • Raffles Institution • Mentors: Zhang Xinhuai (NUS) & Dr. Bryan Lee (BII) • Project: Autodocking • Hwa Chong Institution • Mentor: Dr. Li Haizhou (I2R) • Project: Speech modelling • Finalizing syllabi (for IDA ICT Club scheme) • Apple, SCS, SES • Software Platform • United Devices, BOINC & XGrid

5. AeroGenome – Crunching on a PC Grid • Aim: To study bacterial micro-organisms in the air in Singapore. • Motivation: Air plays significant role in public & environmental health • Initial dataset of 20,000 DNA sequences were matched against database of 3 million known sequences. Single run on isolated compute resources took an entire month. • Same process took less than 2 days on TCG@NUS • Future: Scale up study using larger datasets. [Courtesy of Dr. Patrick Tan, GIS]

6. Seminar Series 2006 Optimal Resource Management – Zones & Containers by Liang Seng Quee (Sun Microsystems) Virtual Infrastructure – The Next Generation Data Center by Lee Poh Wah (VMWare) Key Issues in Grid Computing by Prof. David Walker (Welsh e-Science Centre & Cardiff University, UK) Using Virtualisation Techniques in a Grid Environment by Dr. Ruediger Berlich (Institute for Scientific Computing, Germany) Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 - An Introduction & Real World Application by Arnold Clemente (Microsoft)

7. Seminar Series for the Layman Grid is Good: Unleashing Grid Computing to Power Business, Education & Life 07 Jul – Grid: A Tool for Science & Business Dr. Simon See (Sun Microsystems Inc., Asia) 18 Aug – Commercial Grids: Remote Rendering for 3D Animation Alfred Lie (Frontline Technologies) Sep – Grids in Education Benjamin Khoo (Apple Computers) 06 Oct – AeroGenome Dr. Patrick Tan (National Cancer Center) Nov – Sensor Grids Dr. Lim Hock Beng (ST Engineering) 07 Feb - Grid Computing: New Frontiers Dr. Ruediger Berlich (Institute for Scientific Computing, Germany) 07 Mar – Romance of the PC Grid A/Prof. Tan Tin Wee (National University of Singapore) 08 Apr – Grids for Business for Real? Ong Guan Sin (Singapore Computer Systems) 15 May – A Million Years of Computing Dr. David Andersen (UC Berkeley, USA) 08 Jun – From Grid to Pervasive Computing Prof. Xian-He Sun (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)

8. Brings leaders, critical thinkers & speakers of international renown to Singapore several times a year to provoke thoughts, stimulate discussions, & provide insights on a variety of topics in Grid Computing Prof. Carl Kesselman (USC) Kevin Walsh (Oracle Corporation)

9. GECON 2006 Rocks-A-Palooza II • Venue: SMU city campus • Date: 16 – 19 May 2006 Sun HPC Consortium Meeting

10. In collaboration with HP Tiramisu Program Global Operational Grid (GOG) • Implement baseline grid HPC resources • Build partnerships • Industry-relevant IP creation CERN LCG ANL Caltech CERN NCSA Purdue PSC SDSC ASCC SINGAPORE GOG Cluster

11. International Collaboration & Membership

12. South East Asia Grid Forum • Members • PurposeTo provide a forum for national level discussions on setting up grid infrastructures, deploying applications, and facilitating coordination of projects of common interest in South East Asia. • Meetings • 8 Feb 2006, and 19 May 2006 in Singapore • 3rd meeting is tentatively in Sep 2006, Thailand. Sponsored by:

13. Digital MediaRendering

14. Digital Media • Free access to common pool of mental ray licenses • No charge to commercial users, IHL users & independent animators • Digital Media companies that have used the facilities • TheContentCompany • Omens-Studio • VHQ Productions • Digital Media companies scheduled to use the facilities • mega media • Cubix International • Cyber-Max • Grid Service Brokers • Frontline Technologies Pte Ltd • IHLs • Singapore Polytechnic • Ngee Ann Polytechnic

15. Pipeline of Animation Projects • Completed • Smoking Fish – Hold onto Your Butt • The Yellowman Shortfilm • UK Bull Dog Singing • In the queue … • Piko the Silkworm (22 x 2min episodes) • Man Made Marvels Documentary • Zheng He Documentary • Fun Bots • Nutritional Immunology Sciences Documentary

16. Usage – TheContentCompany • A 2-man company • Title: The Yellowman Shortfilm • Required resources for rendering a submission to “Cannes Lions 2006” 53rd International Advertising Festival (18-24 June 2006)

17. Usage – TheContentCompany • Mental Ray licenses & servers were used to render the entire animation. • Facts: • 6500 frames were rendered • Urgent request for required resources over weekend of 7 - 11 April 2006 • Generation of background, animation, & ambient occlusion layers

18. Usage – TheContentCompany • 2nd Project: UK Bull Dog Singing • Animation for the World Cup 2006, to be shown on UK television. The commissioning company offers viewers to download ring tone & animation. • Facts: • 3200 frames were rendered • Generation of background, animation, & ambient occlusion layers Speed up of 16.5x

19. Usage – “Smoking Fish – Hold onto Your Butt” • Public Service Announcement commissioned by the Surfrider Foundation of America to educate the public about how pollution is harming the country’s coastline. • Working in tandem with Hollywood writer Adam McKay (“Anchorman - Legend of Ron Burgundy”, “Bewitched”) & director Ian O’Roarty, • Omens Studios produced the CG animation for the project. The PSA will be televised nationally in USA in 2006 on various networks.

20. Usage – • Mental Ray licenses & servers were used to render the “sea floor”. • Facts: • 755 frames were rendered

21. Usage – Productions • Proposed rendering job (Life-Buoy) was rendered in-house as it was not large to use the Grid). • NGO tested rendering the job over the Grid to confirm resolution of porting & cross-platform issues. • Facts: 50 frames were rendered Speed up of 3x

22. Quotes • “It is now easier and faster to visualize our work, instead of waiting for days before the work is finished.” Tang Chi Sim MD, Omens Studios • “Grid Computing allows local digital media firms to focus on the creative side of things, rather than worrying over the lack of computing resources.” Yeo Chun Cheng CIO, Media Development Authority

23. Grid Service Broker – • Frontline Technologies is a company which has started to explore the business of remote rendering for Digital Media companies. • Frontline will use of the mental ray licenses from NG’s license server & use NG’s servers as spillover • Frontline will also provide machines to be used on the grid.

24. Demonstration

25. Clusters Clusters Submission Host / Digital Media Portal Animation Rendering on the Grid Rendering is done on the resources Internet / Internet 2 3 1 User connects to the submission host via internet . . . NGPP Network Network Switch 2 Submission host is where user’s input & output files resides and where user submits rendering jobs and collects his ourput.

26. End