Toward an International "Computer Science Grid"

Abstract

The computer science discipline, especially in large scale distributed systems like grids and P2P systems and in high performance computing areas, tends to address issues related to increasingly complex systems, gathering thousands to millions of non trivial components. Theoretical analysis, simulation and even emulation are reaching their limits. Like in other scientific disciplines such as physics, chemistry and life science, there is a need to develop, run and maintain generations of scientific instruments for the observation of complex distributed systems running at real scale and under reproducible experimental conditions. Grid'5000 and DAS3 are two large scale systems designed as scientific instruments for researchers in the domains of grid, P2P and networking. More than testbeds, Grid'5000 and DAS3 have been designed as "computer science grids", where researchers share experimental resources spanning over large geographical distances, are able to reserve resources, configure them, run their experiments, realize precise measurements and replay the same experiments with the same experimental conditions. Computer scientists use these two platforms to address issues in the different software layers between the hardware and the users: networking protocols, OS, middleware, parallel and distributed application runtimes, and applications. In this paper, we will present two computer science grids: Grid '5000 and DAS3. We will describe the motivations, design and current status of these two systems. We will also present some of their key results, not only in terms of scientific results in computer science, but also the impact of these two systems as research tools. The success of the Grid'5000 and DAS platforms is the basis of an international initiative, having the objective to deploy a European level "computer science grid".