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Altair Personal PBS Turns PCs into Compute Clusters

Altair Engineering, a software and services company that offers the GridWorks tool suite, has announced availability of the Personal PBS application. The freely-available Personal PBS application provides a drag-and-drop interface that enables users to leverage the capacity of multi-core computers. The software can also be integrated with the PBS Professional backend cluster computer. Personal PBS is a free Windows Executable that enables users to manage job priorities and enqueue jobs for background processing. PBS Professional is grid infrastructure software based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

RNA Networks Introduces Memory Virtualization Technology

Virtualization efforts have typically focused on server and storage solution, but RNA Networks is approaching memory virtualization as the "third wave" of virtualization. RNA's Memory Virtualization Platform (MVP) supports memory as a shared, network resource that's particularly useful for applications requiring large data sets and/or low latency. RNA's products include RNAcache, which caches data and metadata in an environment linked by high-speed fabric, gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and InfiniBand connections. A second product, RNAmessenger, provides low latency and high throughput for applications such as electronic trading. Built with RNA's memory virtualization technology, it operates on Linux or Unix computers connected via a high-speed fabric, InfiniBand or 10 GbE.  

White Paper: The Importance of Data Access Middleware in Distributed Computing Ken North Computing LLC has released a white paper about the role and importance of data access middleware. "Middleware in Action: Industrial Strength Data Access" discusses defining characteristics of best-of-breed data access middleware. The 90-page report includes a checklist for comparing database drivers and data providers, highlighting features that affect performance, scalability and security. The report also describes performance and scalability scenarios, such as grid computing, SOA, business intelligence, transaction processing, enterprise information integration and content management. The "Middleware in Action" executive summary also includes the data access middleware checklist. OGF DAIS-WG Specifications for RDF Data Access The RDF activity in the Open Grid Forum Database Access and Integration Services Working Group (OGF DAIS-WG) Group has released a draft version of a paper about accessing RDF data sources in a grid services environment. The RDF activity is working to produce two specifications for accessing RDF data via SPARQL and RDF Schema ontology handling primitives. The beginning of the editorial cycle for the specifications was for Open Grid Forum 23 (OGF23).

GridGain and GigaSpaces Announce Java Grid Computing Partnership
GridGain Systems and GigaSpaces Technology announced a partnership to offer a grid computing platform for Java computing. The companies will integrate the open source GridGain computation grid framework with the GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP). GigaSpace XAP uses an in-memory distributed caching capability to support its Enterprise Data Grid architecture. The agreement also provides for the companies to cooperate on marketing and sales efforts, with GridGain distributing GigaSpaces XAP Community Edition.

FSM Labs Announces Real-Time Networking Stack
FSMLabs released Enterprise Real-TimeNet which includes a networking stack that supports ICMP, IP, UDP and TCP. FSMLabs announced Enterprise Real-TimeNet will provide worst-case network round trip times of 50 microseconds using a fault-tolerant architect. It includes a Real-Time Processes Layer and a real-time time sync (RTTimeSync) that the National Association of Security Dealers has listed as a solution that keeps members compliant with federal regulations.

Google, IBM Partner on Internet-Scale Computing
IBM and Google announced an initiative to boost knowledge of large-scale distributed computing among the academic community. The project uses a cluster of several hundred computers, including Google server and IBM BladeCenter servers. The grid is expected to grow to more than 1,600 processors. The project's goal is to increase knowledge of programming internet-scale applications.

Open Grid Forum Releases Documents for Public Review
The Open Grid Forum has released several documents for public review, including a grid computing overview, a strategy document and technical documents. "Distributed Computing at Scale" presents an overview of the Grid and the Open Grid Forum. "Technical Strategy for the Open Grid Forum 2007-2010" describes the plan for developing grid standards during the next three years. Technical documents include "JSDL HPC Profile Application Extension, version 1", "JSDL SPMD Application Extension, Version 1.0" and "HPC Basic Profile, Version 1.0".

GridGain Systems Announces Release 1.5 of Open Source Java Platform
GridGain Systems announced the release of GridGain 1.5, an open source computational grid computing platform for Java developers. GridGain supports application virtualization and it's available with an LGPL license. It provides a custom loader for the JBoss application server to run as a JBoss service and use JMX and JBoss logging. GridGain also provides custom loaders for BEA WebLogic and WebSphere to provide similar capabilities with those platforms. It operates with Java 5 or higher and Linux, Mac OS X, major Unix brands and Windows NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista. GridGain supports integration with JGroups to provide clustering. GridGain also integrates with Spring, AspectJ, GigaSpaces, Tangosol, Oracle Coherence and the Mule ESB. A 15-minute GridGain screencast is available that illustrates how a Java developer can use GridGain to grid-enable a Java program.

3Tera and Layered Technologies Set Record in Linear Scalability Demonstration
Using a virtual private data center, Layered Technologies and 3Tera achieved a score of 42,540 with the UnixBench benchmark. The demonstration used comprised of 443 CPUs, 920GB RAM and 47 terabytes of mass storage. 3Tera provides grid computing and utility computing services for web applications using the AppLogic grid operating system. Layered Technologies is a provider of self-managed utility hosting services. The Virtual Private Data Center was showcased at HostingCon 2007 in Chicago.

DataSynapse Releases GridServer 5.0
DataSynapse, a provider of application virtualization software, has released GridServer 5.0. The GridServer 5.0 product can integrate with role-based security policies and authorization networks. It enables organizations to build mega-grids with as many as 20,000 nodes. It also provides dynamic scaling and optimization capabilities that support preference-based workload scheduling. Some Data Synapse customers are currently running global grids with more than 3000 processors.

Open Grid Forum Releases INFOD, WS-Naming and WS-Agreement Specifications
The Open Grid Forum (OGF) announced the publication of several new documents that enhance standards for grid computing. The new OGF specifications include the Web Services Agreement Specification (WS-Agreement), Information Dissemination in the Grid Environment - Base Specifications (INFOD), Interoperability Testing for The GridRPC API Specification and the WS-Naming Specification. The WS-Agreement specification describes scenarios for using the services and XML document types described by the OGSA EMS (execution management services) architecture. The INFOD specifications defines a mechanism for communication between publishers and consumers using a registry with standard interfaces. It also supports publish-subscribe communication with a notify operation based on the WS-Notification specification. The public comment period for two documents, JSDL HPC Profile Application Extension and JSDL SPMD Application Extension, closes 10 July 2007.

Oracle 11g Focuses on BI, VLDB, Unstructured Data
Oracle announced a new release of its flagship database product. Oracle 11g includes added features such as business intelligence (BI), very large databases (VLDB), high availability applications and easy problem diagnosis. It also adds news compression technologies and capabilities for rapid access to unstructured data.

Gridbus Broker 3.1 Adds Support for Plug-ins
The Gridbus Project has release Gridbus Broker 3.1 with new plug-in capabilities. Release 3.1 provides a plug-in structure for middleware and programming models. It provides a workflow engine plug-in and a thread programming model plug-in. Gridbus Broker is available with an LGPL license. Download

Platform Computing Announces LSF 7.0.1 Workload Manager
Platform Computing, a leading cluster and grid computing software company, announced a new release of its LSF workload management software. LSF 7.0.1 provides tools for optimizing an existing resource infrastructure. It provides policy-driven batch workload processing management and acceleration for data-intensive and compute-intensive applications. Core to Platform products is Platform Enterprise Grid Orchestrator (EGO), the core technology for all Platform products, provides virtualization, automation and sharing of IT resources. EGO is in use by 2,000 customers and has been deployed in environments with over 100 clusters.

Based on data from Quocirca Grid Index Report (April 2005)

Security Researcher Discusses the Overlooked Threats of Federated Identities
"Federated Identities: Overlooked Threats" is a presentation at the San Diego Supercomputer Center by security researcher Thor Larholm. He explains federated identities, the benefits and security problems. Thor discusses security solutions such as load balancers and stateful firewalls (running time 9:41).

Network Resonance CEO Presents Security Taxonomy
The CEO of Network Resonance, Kevin Dick, discusses a security taxonomy of distributed systems and web services in a podcast and videos released this week. Network Resonance, a company founded by Kevin Dick and Eric Rescorla, recently patented a technology for secure SSL auditing. In the video/podcast, Kevin discusses security for point-to-point services, multi-hop services, service components and complex services.

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