Notes of Meeting on Globus/MetaNEOS at Argonne

Present : Ian Foster, Adriana Iamnitchi, Jean-Pierre Goux, Steve
Wright, Golbon Zakeri.

We agreed to work on a taxonomy of optimization algorithms, classified
according to the resource, architecture, communication demands they
would place on a metacomputing infrastructure. The aim is to identify
one or two possible designs for a "metaneos broker" - an assembly of
Globus tools into a complete platform - that could be used to support
a number of optimization applications. Condor's WoDi looks like a
promising base for a number of our applications; Is there some richer
infrastructure that would make it possible to implement a variety of
more complex algorithms? Regular meetings will take place at Argonne
to elaborate this taxonomy, derive the requirements for a metaneos
broker, and figure out how this would be supported in Globus.
(Adriana may do part of her thesis on issues related to these
questions).

Globus/Condor : Ian told us that the Globus people are working on the
high-throughput interface to Condor. There are still some improvements
and fixes to make, it should be ready soon.

Globus/Wodi : It appears that Condor's Wodi (or some slight
modification thereof) will be useful in a large class of optimization
problems. Once all have agreed on a final form of WoDi, Globus will
implement this API as well. 

NEXUS IDL : right now, the lack of an IDL for Nexus is one of the
disadvantage of nexus compared to other technologies like Corba.  Some
globus people (esp. Dennis Gannon) worked on it, Ian told us that he
will try to revive this project, which can really accelerate the
development of codes.

Globus Lite : we agreed that for our end-users, ease-of-use will be
critical. Globus contains many tools and libraries, but not all of
them need to be installed on the client side. Probably Nexus 5
together with some `threads and synchronization' routines are
sufficient for many client applciations such as the `metaneos
broker'. Right now people have to download the whole globus package
and have to select which parts have to be compiled together - a
process that is not necessary straightforward. We will cooperate with
the Globus people on a trimmed-down version of Globus that will be
available for download for our end-users.

Globus documentation : the globus team will try to put more small
examples on their web page to illustrate how to use the different
toolkit APIs.