Sun Microsystems to work with NLR to extend grid computing

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, July 11, 2005

Sun Microsystems Inc. and National LambdaRail have announced a joint initiative to extend Sun's grid efforts, which provides flexible access to distributed high-performance computing resources. NLR, a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies, owns and operates a national-scale fiber optic infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications.

NLR's infrastructure uses Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) to provide up to 40 simultaneous light wavelengths ("lambdas"), each capable of transmitting 10 gigabits per second. This infrastructure provides the ability to provision the dedicated, deterministic network resources that are critical to quickly moving the large amounts of data that best take advantage of grid CPU cycles.

According to Marc Hamilton, director of technology for Sun's Education and Research group, "It was an easy choice for Sun to participate with NLR on this project since many of our largest education and research customers are already using NLR. We believe large commercial users of Sun grids will in the future be able to benefit from using the kinds of networking resources NLR provides."

In addition, possible future areas of collaboration include testing new grid management software and linking Sun's benchmark centers.

Tom West, CEO of NLR commented, "We are extremely pleased to have Sun as the first computer systems company to work with NLR to take Grid computing capabilities to the next level. Sun has a long history of supporting academic and research community members, and working with Sun provides an opportunity to engage commercial organizations that are rapidly requiring the same types of cuttingedge networking capabilities that were previously only available to the largest national research centers."

Mike Pearce, Deputy CIO for the University of Southern California, who was recently in Heidelberg presenting at Sun's High Performance Computing Consortium, added, "We are glad to see Sun working with NLR on this joint initiative. USC operates one of the largest supercomputer clusters at any private U.S. university, but even that is not enough for some applications and needs. We already use NLR to connect to other research computing centers and look forward to the opportunity of using NLR in the future to connect to Sun Grid to offload some of our peak computing demands."

National LambdaRail, Inc. (NLR) is a major initiative of U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies to provide a national scale infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications. NLR puts the control, the power and the promise of experimental network infrastructure in the hands of our nation's scientists and researchers.