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Architectures used
A platform composed of 2 computation grids.
This grid is controlled by a central server located in the Orsay University. All the resources are connected by the high speed RENATER network. (RENATER stands for Réseau National de Télécommunications pour la Technologie, l’Enseignement et la Recherche, it links together all the French postgraduate schools and research centres.)
The initial computing power of this grid is 500Gflops, to which can be added, if necessary, part of the Gflops already present in the 6 partner university and organizations.
The Decrypthon program also uses an “internet user” grid: the World Community Grid. The WCG grid uses PCs owned by internet users willing to participate in the Decrypthon program, making their PCs’ idle time available to scientists. Indeed, an owner uses on average only 10% of the computational power of his PC. Therefore, the grid’s computational power depends on the number of internet users’ subscriptions, knowing each computer has a theoretical computational power of approximately 1Gflops.
The Decrypthon program also uses an “internet user” grid: the World Community Grid. The WCG grid uses PCs owned by internet users willing to participate in the Decrypthon program, making available to scientists their PCs’ idle time. Indeed, an owner uses on average only 10% of the computing power of his PC. Therefore, the grid’s computing power depends on the number of internet users’ subscriptions, knowing each computer has a theoretical computing power of approximately 1Gflops.
What are the differences between the university grid and the internet user grid?
The grid choice relies on the research program characteristics. Indeed:
- The university grid is used to run parallel computations on long terms. These computations can be strongly dependant, which means they are able to share and exchange a large volume of data at a high frequency. Basically, the grid is composed of a high-speed network, available 24/24 and supercomputers (several Go of RAM each).
- The internet user grid is composed of “volatile” computers – randomly, internet users connect, disconnect, reboot or shut down their computer, etc. As a result, the computations should not be too dependant, with a fairly short computing time, and an access to limited data. However, the high number of PCs available makes it possible to distribute these computations massively.
The middleware used.
Since December 2007, the Decrypthon program uses the middleware DIET, the solution developed by the GRAAL team from the “Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon”.
