The D-Grid Initiative (German Grid Initiative) was a government project to fund

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

infrastructure for education and research ( e-Science) in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It uses the term

grid computing Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from co ...

. D-Grid started September 1, 2005 with six community projects and an integration project (DGI) as well as several partner projects.

Integration project

The D-Grid integration project intended to integrate community projects. The D-Grid integration project acted as a service provider for the science community in Germany. The project office is located at the Institute for Scientific Computing (IWR) at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The resources to ensure a sustainable Grid infrastructure are provided by four work packages: # D-Grid Base-Software: The major task of this work package is to provide several different middleware packages. These are the Globus Toolkit, UNICORE, LCG/gLite, GridSphere and the Grid Application Toolkit (GAT). The community projects linked together in the D-Grid integration project are supported during the installation, operation and if needed and possible the customisation of the Base-Software. # Deployment and operation of the D-Grid infrastructure: Work package 2 builds up a Core-D-Grid. It was used as a prototype to test the operational functionality of the system. This work package also deals with monitoring, accounting and billing. # Networks and Security: The network infrastructure in D-Grid is based on the DFN Wissenschaftsnetz X-WiN. Work package 3 will provide extensions to the existing network infrastructure according to the needs of Grid middleware used in D-Grid. Further tasks are to build an AA-Infrastructure in D-Grid, develop firewall concepts for Grid environments and set up Grid specific CERT services. # D-Grid project office: The work package is responsible for the integration of community projects into one common D-Grid platform. Work package 4 also deals with sustainability.

Communities

Six community projects participated in the D-Grid Initiative:

AstroGrid-D

AstroGrid-D, also referred to as the German Astronomy Community Grid (GACG), is a joint research project of thirteen astronomical institutes and grid-oriented

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

groups, supported by

supercomputing A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

centers. The main objective of AstroGrid-D is the integration of German research facilities into a unified nationwide research infrastructure in the field of astronomy. The goal is to improve the efficiency and usability of hardware and software resources including computer clusters, astronomical data archives, and observational facilities such as robotic telescopes. AstroGrid-D supports the standards of the

International Virtual Observatory Alliance The International Virtual Observatory Alliance or IVOA is a worldwide scientific organisation formed in June 2002. Its mission is to facilitate international coordination and collaboration necessary for enabling global and integrated access to data ...

(IVOA) and cooperates closely with international projects on grid development. AstroGrid-D is managed by the

Astrophysical Institute Potsdam Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) is a German research institute. It is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory Potsdam (AOP) founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first o ...

(AIP).

C3-Grid

At the Collaborative Climate Community Data and Processing Grid (C3-Grid) scientific researchers are trying to understand the earth system including their subsystems like oceans, atmosphere and biosphere. For the last decades the amount of data has increased enormously in the field of climate research. On the one hand, due to rapid rise in computing power scientists are now able to use models with higher resolution and perform long term simulations. The scientists are able to couple models for the mentioned subsystems in complex cumulative simulations producing petabytes of output which is collected in distributed data archives. On the other hand, monitoring the earth with satellites results in a second huge data stream for climate research. Up to now, no uniform access to these distributed data is available what creates a bottleneck for the scientific research. The C3-Grid proposes to link these distributed data archives. The management of C3-Grid has the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven. (For further information www.c3grid.de)

GDI-Grid

The GDI-Grid ("Geodateninfrastrukturen-Grid" - "Spatial Data Infrastructure Grid") project focuses on solutions for efficient integration and processing of geodata based on

GIS A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing Geographic data and information, geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with Geographic information system software, sof ...

and SDI technologies. The project will integrate GDI and Grid technologies in a working GDI-Grid infrastructure and thus demonstrate the complementarity of both fields of science. Distributed geospatial data—currently accessed via standardized GIS and SDI services—will build the basis for this endeavour. This data basis can be put to more use by processing it and merging it with other data, creating standards-based, multi-functional generic SDI services. The project focuses on data, models, services and workflows for spatial data infrastructures. Services for integration, processing and management of spatial data are to be developed and implemented within the D-Grid infrastructure. A proof of concept will be given using a number of representative scenarios such as emergency routing for disaster management, flood simulation and sound propagation simulation. The project is managed by the

Leibniz University Hannover Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover (german: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität), also known as the University of Hannover, is a public research university located in Hanover, Germany. Founded on 2 May 1831 as Higher Vocational Sc ...

at the Leibniz University IT Services (LUIS).

HEP-Grid

The HEP-Grid Project focused on High Energy Physics, Nuclear as well as Astroparticle Physics. The main task of HEP-Grid is to optimize the data analysis using distributed computing and storage resources. The project developments are extensions to the grid middleware from the Enabling Grids for E-scienceE project of the

European Grid Infrastructure European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) is a series of efforts to provide access to high-throughput computing resources across Europe using grid computing techniques. The EGI links centres in different European countries to support international rese ...

and

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundred ...

(LHC) Computing Grid (LCG) project. They provide significant improvements for data analysis of experiments currently taking data and for those planned at the proposed

International Linear Collider The International Linear Collider (ILC) is a proposed linear particle accelerator. It is planned to have a collision energy of 500 GeV initially, with the possibility for a later upgrade to 1000 GeV (1 TeV). Although early proposed ...

(ILC). For the HEP-Grid Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), "German Electron Synchrotron") in

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collaborates with eight German research facilities and universities and a set of associate partners.

InGrid

InGrid is a community project in the field of Grid computing in engineering sciences. InGrid aims to enable engineering projects for grid-based applications and allow for the common, efficient use of common compute and software resources. Grid technologies were promised to combine with competences in modeling, simulation and optimization. Five typical applications (foundry technologies, metal forming technologies, groundwater flow and transport, turbine simulation and fluid-structure interaction) are considered as showcases to cover the three central areas of computationally intensive engineering applications, that are coupled multi-scale problems, coupled multi-discipline problems, and distributed simulation-based optimization. In particular adaptive and scalable process models and grid based runtime environments for these tasks are developed. The support of virtual prototyping and the optimization of scientific engineering operational sequences is an emphasis of the project. The project management for InGrid is provided by the High Performance Computing Center (Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum) Stuttgart
HLRS
of the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart (german: Universität Stuttgart) is a leading research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany wit ...

MediGRID

The joint project MediGRID unifies research institutes in medicine, biomedical informatics and life sciences into a consortium. Partners are from industry, healthcare and research facilities. The main goal of MediGRID is the development of agGrid middleware integration platform enabling eScience services for biomedical life science. The project formed four modules (middleware, ontology, resource fusion and eScience), and developed a grid infrastructure for biomedical users. The user communities are represented in three research modules for biomedical informatics, image processing and clinical research.

SuGI

SuGI - Sustainable Grid Infrastructure - is a gap project of the German Grid Initiative. Its major task is to disseminate the knowledge of grid technology and to enhance its use. Thus, SuGI addresses all academic computing centers as well as enterprises, which still have not adopted grid technology. They will be supported in providing grid resources and services. Experiences in the D-Grid projects will be made available to these institutions. Thus, SuGI offers own training courses; attends to external courses, create video and audio recordings and provide these online to the D-Grid communities via a scaling training infrastructure SuGI-Portal. SuGI claimed to develop training systems for grid middleware, simplify installation and servicing procedures, and work on the development and evaluation of legal and organizational structures.

TextGrid

While grid technologies were developed for the

natural Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...

and the

life sciences This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, the ...

, there are opportunities for deploying

Grid computing Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from co ...

and e-Science concepts in other areas as well.

TextGrid TextGrid is a research group with the goal of supporting access to and the exchange of information in the humanities and social sciences with the help of modern information technology (the grid). The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of ...

is a grid project in the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

, and uses the

buzzword A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used ...

"e-Humanities". TextGrid promised to create a grid-based infrastructure for the

collaborative editing __NOTOC__ Collaborative editing is the process of multiple people editing the same document simultaneously. This technique may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially improve the quality of documents and increase productivity. ...

, annotation, analysis and publication of specialist texts for researchers in philology, linguistics, and related fields. In addition to providing a comprehensive toolset, the project establishes an open platform for other projects to plug into the TextGrid.

ValueGrids

ValueGrids developed

service level management The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of detailed practices for IT activities such as IT service management (ITSM) and IT asset management (ITAM) that focus on aligning IT services with the needs of business. ITIL de ...

in service value networks. This was supposed to enable providers of Software-as-a-Service solutions to utilize grid infrastructures and leverage the German national grid infrastructure. The ValueGrids project partners are: SAP AG (Coordinator), Conemis AG, IBM Deutschland Research & Development GmbH,

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially german: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (german: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public university, public research university located in Freiburg im Breisg ...

and the

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 w ...

Partner projects

Several partner projects are involved in D-Grid.

WISENT

The e-Science project WISENT (''Wissensnetz Energiemeteorologie'') promised to optimize cooperation of scientific organizations in energy meteorology employing grid technologies. The main focus of research is the influence of weather and climate on transformation, transport, and utilisation of energy.

Funding

More than 100 German research facilities were funded with about 20 billion Euros for 3 years by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.