Supercomputers in Grids - Cloud, Grid and High Performance Computing: Emerging Applications - page 8

industry. The experiment was successful and was
continued for about 10 years.
First attempts of the computing center to at-
tract also usage from Daimler initially failed.
This changed when in 1995 both the CEO of
Daimler and the prime minister of the state of
Baden-Württemberg gave their support for a col-
laboration of Daimler and the computing center
at the University of Stuttgart in the field of high
performance computing. The cooperation was
realized as a public-private partnership. In 1995,
hww was established with hww being an acronym
for Höchstleistungsrechner für Wissenschaft und
Wirtschaft (HPC for academia and industry)
The initial share holders of hww were:

• Sharing of operational costs: Creating a

group of operational experts should help to
bring down the staff cost for running sys-
tems. This should be mainly achieved by
combining the expertise of a small group
of people and by being able to handle vaca-
tion time and sick leave much easier than
before.

• Optimize system usage: Industrial usage

typically comes in bursts when certain
stages in the product development cycle
require a lot of simulations. Industry then
has a need for immediate availability of
resources. In academia most simulations
are part of long term research and systems
are typically filled continuously. The intent
was to find a model to intertwine the two
modes for the benefit of both sides.

• Daimler Benz had concentrated all its IT

activities in a subsidiary called debis. So
debis became the official share holder of
hww holding 40% of the company. Prerequisites and Problems

• Porsche took a minority share of 10% of

the company mainly making sure to con-
tinue the partnership with the University of
Stuttgart and its computing center.

A number of issues had to be resolved in order to
make hww operational. The most pressing ones
were: Security related issues: This included the
whole complex of trust and reliability from the
point of view of industrial users. While for aca-
demic users data protection and availability of
resources are of less concern, it is vital for industry
that its most sensitive data are protected and no
information leaks to other users. Such information
may even include things as the number and size of
jobs run by a competitor. Furthermore, permanent
availability of resources is a must in order to meet
internal and external deadlines. While academic
users might accept a failure of resources once in
a while, industry requires reliable systems.
Data and communication: This includes the
question of connectivity and handling input
and output data. Typically network connectivity
between academia and industry is poor. Most
research networks are not open for industry. Most
industries are worried about using public networks
for security reasons. Accounting mechanisms for
research networks are often missing. So, even to

• The University of Stuttgart took a share

of 25% and was represented by the High
Performance Computing Center Stuttgart
(HLRS).

• The State of Baden-Württemberg took

a share of 25% being represented by the
Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of
Science.

The purpose of hww was not only to bring
together academia and industry in using high
performance computers, but to harvest some of the
benefits of such collaboration. The key advantages
were expected to be:

• Leverage of market power: Combining

the purchasing power of industry and aca-
demia should help to achieve better price/
performance for all partners both for pur-
chase price and maintenance costs.