October 22, 2004, 9am, ELH 110
"Realistic Large-Scale Online Network Simulation"
Philip Papadopoulos, San Diego Supercomputer Center

Dedicated optical networks to support e-Science are coming of age. Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM) is dramatically increasing the
aggregate carrying capacity of optical fibers and 10 Gigabit networks are plummeting in price. Scientists can now affordably connect their laboratory clusters to private high-bandwidth light pipes (termed "lambdas") to form LambdaGrids.  The OptIPuter is a five year NSF-funded research project that is exploring how this technology disruption fundamentally changes distributed systems design.  Key research issues include determining how and if  lambda circuits should be exposed to applications, how one controls light circuits, and what protocol enhancements are relevant. Working closely with biomedical and geoscience applications, we are prototyping campus-scale systems in California and Illinois to understand first-order effects. This talk describes  these in detail and highlights key research software in the areas of non-TCP protocols, dynamic light path management, virtual machine construction, and real machine management.  For more details see http://www.optiputer.net

Dr. Papadopoulos received his PhD in 1993 from UC Santa Barbara in Electrical Engineering. He spent 5 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) development team. He is currently the Program Director of Grid and Cluster Computing at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Dr. Papadopoulos is deeply involved in key research projects including the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN), OptIPuter, the Geosciences Network (GEON), the NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI) and the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA). He is also well known for the development of the open source Rocks Cluster toolkit, which has installed base of 100s of clusters. His research interests revolve around distributed and clustered systems and how they can be used more effectively in an expanding bandwidth-rich environment.