Paul Avery

Abstract

A collaboration of U.S. physicists, astronomers and computer scientists from U.S. universities and national laboratories has since 1999 conducted a multifaceted R&D program aimed at building large-scale Grid cyberinfrastructure in the U.S. This cyberinfrastructure now supports frontier international experiments and data intensive disciplines in high
energy physics, gravitational wave astronomy and digital astronomy. The projects include GriPhyN (www.griphyn.org/), the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory (www.ivdgl.org/), and Particle Physics Data Grid (www.ppdg.net/).

This multi-disciplinary program has provided a wealth of results, including powerful new Grid tools and services; a uniform Grid middleware packaging scheme (the Virtual Data Toolkit) that simplifies Grid deployment across many sites; integration of complex Grid tools and services in large science applications; multiple education and outreach projects; and new approaches to integrating advanced network infrastructure in Grid applications.

Our efforts have led to the creation and continuous operation since Oct. 2003 of Grid3 (http://www.ivdgl.org/grid3/), an international-scale Grid consisting of 30 sites and 3500 processors supporting multiple disciplines. Grid3 will be extended in mid-2005 to form the Open Science Grid (http://www.opensciencegrid.org/), a national Grid supporting a variety of
data intensive disciplines.

The success of these projects have led to new collaborations andopportunities which have launched several advanced networking projects, campus and statewide Grids, as well as education & training projects and centers. They have also provided new ideas for addressing the international Digital Divide.