Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
connect to a public institution may be difficult for
industry. The amount of data to be transferred is
another big issue as the size of output data can get
prohibitively high. Both issues were addressed by
increasing speed of networks and were helped by
a tendency of German and local research networks
opening up to commercial users.
Economic issues: One of the key problems
was the establishment of costs for the usage of
various resources. Until then no sound pricing
mechanism for the usage of HPC system had been
established either at the academic or industrial
partners. Therefore, the partners had to agree on
a mechanism to find prices for all resources that
are relevant for the usage of computers.
Legal and tax issues: The collaboration of
academia and industry was a challenge for lawyers
on both sides. The legal issues had to be resolved
and the handling of taxes had to be established in
order to make the company operational.
After sorting out all these issues, the company
was brought to life and its modes of operation had
to be established.
year and have to adapt their acquisition strategy
to the needs of hww.
Hww is controlled by an advisory board
that meets regularly (typically 3 times a year).
The board approves the budget of hww and dis-
cusses future service requirements of the overall
company. The partners of hww have agreed that
industrial services are provided by industry only
while academic services are provided by academic
partners only.
The Public-Private Grid
Over the life time of hww, a Grid infrastructure
was set up that today consist of the following key
components:
•
A national German supercomputer facility,
a number of large clusters and a number of
shared memory systems.
•
File system providing short and long term
data storage facilities.
•
Network connectivity for the main partners
at the highest speed available.
Mode of Operation
•
A software and security concept that meets
the requirements of industrial users with-
out restraining access for academic users.
In order to help achieve its goals, a lean organi-
zation for hww was chosen. The company itself
does not have any staff. It is run by two part time
directors. Hww was responsible for operation of
systems, security, and accounting of system us-
age. In order to do this, work was outsourced to
the partners of hww.
A pricing mechanism has been established
that guarantees that any service of hww is sold to
share holders of hww at cost price minimizing the
overhead costs to the absolutely necessary. Costs
and prices are negotiated for a one year period
based on the requirements and available services
of all partners. This requires an annual planning
process for all services and resources offered by
the partners through hww. The partners specifi-
cally have to balance supply and demand every
The cyber-infrastructure created through the
cooperation in hww is currently used by scientists
from all over Germany and Europe and engineers
in several large but also small and medium sized
enterprises. Furthermore, the concept has been
integrated into the German national D-Grid project
and the state-wide Baden-Württemberg Grid. It
thus provides a key backbone facility for simula-
tion in academia and industry.
DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
We now have a 13 years experience with the
hww concept. The company has undergone some
changes over the years. The main changes are:
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