KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

The following keynote speakers are scheduled (alphabetical listing):

David Barkai | Rajkumar Buyya | Gene Kan | Martin King | Jikku Venkat

David Barkai

Affiliation: Intel
Subject: "Internet Distributed Computing
The intersection of Web Services, P2P, and Grid Computing"
Abstract: Emerging uses of the Internet - including web services, peer-to-peer, and grid computing - provide both the glimpse of and the impetus for evolution of the Internet into a distributed computing platform of unprecedented scale. In this talk we present a building-block approach to distributed computing on the Internet that combines foundations provided by standards-based web services (WbS), grid computing (Grid), and peer-to-peer computing (P2P). The three components contribute complementary technologies: Interoperability through protocols and application-to-application interaction from WbS; Resource management and infrastructure services from Grid; Collaboration and direct exchanges at the edge from P2P. The convergence to Internet distributed computing (IDC) provides a common computational platform to very diverse audiences - commercial enterprises, research institutions, and decentralized communities of individuals. We will describe aspects of the emerging framework through fundamental underlying principles: Virtualization of decentralized resources, dynamic configuration and run-time binding, resource aggregation and orchestration, and security and authentication. We finish with thoughts about future applications based on IDC.
Bio: David Barkai is a member of the Distributed Systems Lab of Intel's Corporate Technology Group. He has also been a content architect for the Intel Developer Forum conference and a software scientist in the Microcomputer Software Lab. Before joining Intel in 1996, David worked for 25 years in the field of scientific and engineering supercomputing for Control Data Corporation, Cray Research Inc., Supercomputer Systems Inc., and NASA Ames Research Center. David holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and has more than 20 publications as papers, conference proceedings, and textbook contributions on the subjects of physics, numerical methods, and computer applications and architectures. He recently published a book titled "Peer-to-Peer Computing: Technologies for Sharing and Collaborating on the Net".

Rajkumar Buyya

Affiliation: Melbourne University
Subject: "Grid Economy comes of Age: Emerging Gridbus Tools for Service-Oriented Cluster and Grid Computing"
Abstract: Computational Grids enable the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed resources (such as computers, data bases, and scientific instruments) for solving large-scale problems in science, engineering, and commerce. However, application development, resource management, scheduling, and supporting end-to-end quality-of-services (QoS) in these environments is a complex undertaking. This is due to the geographic distribution of resources that are owned by different organizations having different usage policies and cost models, and varying loads and availability patterns. To address these challenges, we have developed distributed computational economy framework for resource allocation and regulation of supply-and-demand for resources. We applied this framework in the design and development of user QoS requirements driven scheduling systems that manage distributed resources in a single administrative domain (cluster computing) and also in multiple administrative domains (grid computing).

The Gridbus (Grid computing and Business) toolkit project is engaged in the design and development of cluster and grid middleware technologies for service-oriented computing. It provides end-to-end services to aggregate or lease services of distributed resources depending on their availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-service requirements. The key objective of the Gridbus project is to develop fundamental, next-generation cluster and grid technologies that support a utility-driven computing. The following initiatives are being carried out as part of the Gridbus project:

  • At grid-level, it extends our previous work on grid economy and scheduling to support (a) different parallel application models, (b) different distributed economy models, (c) data models, and (d) architecture models--both grids and P2P networks.
  • At resource level, it supports QoS driven resource scheduler (e.g., cluster scheduler). It helps in enforcing allocation of resources based on service-level agreements.
  • A GridBank (GB) mechanism that supports a secure Grid-wide accounting and payment handling to enable both co-operative and competitive economy models for resource sharing.
  • The GridSim simulator is being extended to support simulation of these concepts for performance evaluation.
  • GUI tools for enabling distributed processing of legacy applications.
  • Apply them to various application domains: high-energy physics, brain activity analysis, drug discovery, data mining, GridEmail, and automated management of e-commerce.

The presentation covers four topics. First, we briefly review emerging trends in network-based high performance computing and identify resource management challenges. Then, we introduce our framework on Grid Architecture for Computational Economies (GRACE) that leverages existing technologies and provides new services that are essential for constructing industrial-strength Grids. We discuss the use of our economic grid infrastructure in scheduling parametric computations containing hundreds of jobs for execution on the World Wide Grid (WWG) testbed. We briefly discuss GridSim components and its use in simulating cluster and grid schedulers. Finally, we present the usage of our tools in composition and distributed execution of data-intensive applications (e.g., Drug Design and Brain Activity Analysis) on the Grid to demonstrate their capabilities.

Reference
Rajkumar Buyya, Economic-based Distributed Resource Management and Scheduling for Grid Computing, PhD Thesis, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, April 2002. http://www.buyya.com/thesis/

Bio: Rajkumar Buyya is Co-Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Task Force on Cluster Computing (TFCC) and international speaker in the IEEE Computer Society Chapter Tutorials Program. Currently at the University of Melbourne, Australia, he is leading research activities of the Grid computing and Distributed Systems (GRIDS) Laboratory. He has authored three books Microprocessor x86 Programming, Mastering C++, and Design of PARAS Microkernel. He has edited book High Performance Cluster Computing, Prentice Hall, USA and High Performance Mass Storage and Parallel I/O, Wiley/IEEE Press, USA. He is one of the creators of system software for PARAM supercomputers developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Bangalore, India. He has lectured on advanced technologies such as Parallel, Distributed and Multithreaded Computing, Internet and Java, Cluster Computing, Java and High Performance Computing, and Grid computing in many international conferences and institutions. He has organised and chaired IEEE/ACM international conferences in the area of Cluster and Grid Computing. For further information, please browse: http://www.buyya.com

Gene Kan

It is with great sadness that we inform you that Gene Kan passed away as a result of an accident, Saturday June 29th, 2002.

Gene contributed much to the industry specifically in the peer-to-peer (P2P) space. He was a bright, witty, articulate spokesperson for Gnutella and the P2P movement. He co-founded Infrasearch (gonesilent) to create a new distributed search technology to access more timely information on the Web. Infrasearch was acquired by Sun Microsystems in March of 2001. The Infrasearch team joined the JXTA team and integrated the search technology into Sun's JXTA technology by June of 2001. Several organizations within Sun and external to Sun are exploring the use of the technology including Sun's Enterprise Services and neofonie in Germany. Gene brought new ideas to the organization and stretched our thinking as we continue to explore new distributed computing technology.

Gene was a trusted friend and colleague, and we will miss him greatly. At the request of his family, there will be no public service or memorial for Gene.

Gene Kan was among the first to produce an open source version of Gnutella software (under the GNU General Public License) after Gnutella was released by Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper of Gnullsoft. Mr Kan soon became one of Gnutella's key spokesmen. Previously, Kan was an SGML/XML consultant and kernel network engineer at Check Point Software. He was CEO of InfraSearch prior to its acquisition by Sun Microsystems. In his spare moments, he enjoys racing his cars, LTLENDN and BIGENDN.

"Remembering Gene Kan"
by David Barkai


Martin King

Affiliation: Quick Com
Subject: "Transforming the reliability, security and scalability of IT communications through the pervasive deployment of serverless software infrastructure"
Bio: Martin King is one of the leading authorities in Peer-to-Peer technologies and communications. He has extensive international experience in communications technology and the software and hardware industries. Educated in England in microelectronics and electronic engineering, his skills span technology development and implementation, and business development. He holds several patents in the fields of broadcasting, communications and power management circuit design, areas in which he has published numerous articles. He has held various executive management positions with technology companies, and continues to assist several high tech companies as a consultant and board member. Martin King is President and CEO of Quick Com, the Swiss-based company he founded in 1998, now the rapidly emerging leader in the field of serverless Peer-to-Peer business communications software. Highly reputed for his industry vision in the fields of Peer-to-Peer Computing, telecommunications and broadband media distribution, Martin King is a regular speaker at international conferences.

Jikku Venkat

Affiliation: United Devices
Subject: "Grid Computing in the Enterprise with the UD MetaProcessor"
Bio: Dr. Jikku Venkat, CTO of United Devices, brings over 10 years of experience in the computer industry in a unique mix of roles as a researcher, advanced technologist, product developer, and engineering executive. Most recently, Dr. Venkat was the Vice-President of Engineering at United Devices, responsible for building the engineering team from the ground up . He led the team that shipped the first commercial, general-purpose grid software, the MetaProcessor platform. Under Dr. Venkat's tenure, The MetaProcessor platform runs the largest commercial grid in the world, has evolved through three generations, and is currently deployed at major pharmaceutical companies.

Prior to United Devices, Dr. Venkat was the principal design engineer and technologist on an advanced, legacy-free, Web-centric PC from Dell. He was involved in all aspects of product development from concept to production. Prior to WebPC, Dr. Venkat was a senior technologist involved in the evaluation of new technologies and setting technology strategy for the CTO.

Prior to his tenure at Dell, Dr. Venkat worked at IBM for 8 years where he was a systems architect and technologist for network computers. He also led the development of several advanced chipsets for desktop and multiprocessor systems. He was also an architect/consultant on PowerPC platform development and strategy. He was involved in the system architecture/performance analysis, and led development on the prototype of a high-end multi-processor server with a high-speed communication fabric. Early in his IBM career, Dr. Venkat developed scheduling and monitoring tools for parallel program execution using a distributed network of idle workstations. He developed a suite of parallel programs and completed extensive performance analysis to demonstrate the feasibility of using this network of workstations as a massively parallel computing system.

Dr. Venkat holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. His graduate research experience centered on processor architecture, performance analysis, compiler technology, and the development of parallel programs. He has over 7 patents issued or filed and several under development.

Last updated 25 June, 2002