Supercomputers in Grids - Cloud, Grid and High Performance Computing: Emerging Applications - page 10

• Change of partners: When Daimler sold

debis, the shares of an automotive com-
pany were handed over to an IT company.
The new partner T-Systems further diver-
sified its activities creating a subsidiary
(called T-Systems SfR) together with the
German Aerospace Center. T-Systems SfR
took 10% of the 40% share of T-Systems.
On the public side, two other universities
were included with the four public partners
holding 12.5% each.

the competition for scarce resources. The other
financial argument is a synergistic effect that ac-
tually allowed achieving lower prices whenever
academia and industry merged their market power
through hww to buy larger systems together.
Improved resource usage: The improved us-
age of resources during vacation time quickly
is optimistic at best as companies - at least in
Europe - tend to schedule their vacation time in
accordance with public education vacations. As
a result, industrial users are on vacation when
scientists are on vacation. Hence, a better resource
usage by anti-cyclic industrial usage turns out to
be not achievable. Some argue that by reducing
prices during vacation time for industry one might
encourage more industrial usage when resources
are available. However, here one has to compare
costs: the costs for CPU time are in the range
of thousands of Euro that could potentially be
saved. On the other side, companies would have
to adapt their working schedules to the vacation
time of researchers and would have to make sure
that their staff - very often with small children -
would have to stay at home. Evidence shows that
this is not happening
The analysis shows that financially the dual
use of high performance computers in a Grid can
be interesting. Furthermore, a closer collaboration
between industry and research in high performance
computing has helped to increase the awareness
for the problems on both sides. Researchers
understand what the real issues in simulation in
industry are. Industrial designers understand how
they can make good use of academic resources
even though they have to pay for them.

• Change of operational model: Initially

systems were operated by hww which out-
sourced task to T-Systems and HLRS at the
beginning. Gradually, a new model was
used. Systems are operated by the owners
of the systems following the rules and reg-
ulations of hww. The public-private part-
nership gradually moves from being an op-
erating company towards being a provider
of a platform for the exchange of services
and resources for academia and industry.

These organizational changes had an impact on
the operation of hww. Having replaced an end user
(Daimler) by a re-seller hww focused more on the
re-selling of CPU cycles. This was emphasized by
public centers operating systems themselves and
only providing hww with CPU time. The increase
in number of partners, on the other hand, made it
more difficult to find consensus.
Overall, however, the results of 13 years of
hww are positive. With respect to the expected
benefits and advantages both of hww and its Grid
like model the followings are noticeable:
The cost issue: Costs for HPC can potentially
be reduced for academia if industry pays for us-
age of systems. Overall, hww was positive for
its partners in this respect over the last 13 years.
Additional funding was brought in through selling
CPU time but also because hardware vendors had
an interest to have their systems used by industry
through hww. At the same time, however, industry
takes away CPU cycles from academia increasing

CONCLUSION

Supercomputers can work as big nodes in Grid
environments. Their users benefit from the soft-
ware developed in general purpose Grids. Industry
and academia can successfully share such Grids.