DS-GRID

Large Scale Distributed Simulation on the Grid
e-Science Sister Project
GR/S82862/01

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Contacts

• Dr Georgios Theodoropoulos, School of Computer Science,  University of Birmingham
• Dr Stephen Turner and Dr Wentong Cai, Parallel and Distributed Computing Centre, School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Project Summary

In the Spring of 2003, the e-Science Core Programme issued a call for high quality proposals for travel and networking projects (referred to as “Sister Projects”) to establish synergistic links between individual UK e-Science projects and leading Grid/e-Science projects from around the globe. DS-Grid was one of only four such projects which was selected for funding

Modelling and simulation is required in many areas of science and engineering, for example, for predicting the behavior of new systems being designed or for analyzing natural phenomena. These simulation systems often require huge computing resources and the data sets required by the simulation may also be geographically distributed. Furthermore, the development of such complex simulation applications usually requires collaborative effort from researchers with different domain knowledge and expertise, possibly at different locations. In order to support collaborative model development and to cater for the increasing complexity of such systems, it is necessary to harness distributed resources over the Internet.  The Grid provides an unrivalled technology for large scale distributed simulation. While HLA enables the construction of large-scale distributed simulations using existing and possibly distributed simulation components, Grid technologies enable collaboration and the use of distributed computing resources, while also facilitating access to geographically distributed data sets. 

The vision of the project is a  “Grid plug-and-play distributed simulation system", a distributed collaborative simulation environment where researchers with different domain knowledge and expertise, possibly at different locations, develop, modify, assemble and execute distributed simulation components over the Grid. 

The project links research efforts in the UK and Singapore to bring  together a combination of strong expertise in distributed simulation, grid computing and lay the foundations for a future research agenda to advance the field of grid aware large scale distributed simulation

Software

• HLA-GRID_REPAST, which intergates the HLA_GRID system with HLA_RePast to enable the execution of RePast agent-based simulations on the Grid. Sources available upon request.

Publications

1. D. Chen, G. Theodoropoulos, S. Turner, W. Cai, Y. Zhang, R. Minson, “Large Scale Agent-based Simulation on the Grid”, Future Generation Computer Systems - The International Journal of Grid Computing: Theory, Methods and Applications, ISSN: 0167-739X, Elsevier. Volume 24, Issue 7, July 2008, Pages 658-671. DOI: 10.1016/j.future.2008.01.004.
2. Yi Zhang, Georgios Thedoropoulos, Rob Minson, Stephen J Turner, Wentong Cai, Yong Xie and Brian Logan, "Grid-aware Large Scale Distributed Simulation of Agent-based Systems", in 2004 European Simulation Interoperability Workshop (EuroSIW 2005), 05E-SIW-047, Toulouse, France, June 2005. Outstanding Paper Award.
3. Georgios Theodoropoulos, Yi Zhang, Dan Chen, Rob Minson, Stephen John Turner, Wentong Cai, Yong Xie, and Brian Logan, "Large Scale Distributed Simulation on the Grid". CCGRID 2006 Workshop: International Workshop on Distributed Simulation on the Grid, Singapore, 16-19 May 2006.

Workshops organised as part of the project

1.  International Workshop on Distributed Simulation on the Grid, in conjunction with CCGRID 2006, Singapore, 16-19 May 2006
   • Pictures from the workshop: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
2. The Challenges of working with Grids for Simulations, Birds of a Feather Session, AHM 2006, UK,  20 September 2006.

Publicity

• DS-Grid Poster [pdf file]

Page maintained by G. Theodoropoulos. Last update: 03/06/2009