Consortium to Build Computing Grid across Texas

What the Web is to information, the Grid will be to computing. Users of the Web share information, users of the Grid will share processing power and applications and will pool resources to solve complex scientific and technical problems.

To help meet the challenges of providing the infrastructure for this next generation of network computing, Rice University has joined with other leading research universities and high-performance computing centers in Texas to form a consortium named High Performance Computing Across Texas (HiPCAT).

The consortium originated as an informal discussion group for sharing expertise and experience among high-performance computing staff and researchers at Rice, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University, the University of Houston, and the University of Texas at Austin. As HiPCAT grew to include more researchers and encompass additional technology areas, in particular Grid computing, it undertook its first major project, the Texas Internet Grid for Research and Education (TIGRE) in July 2001, leading it to become a formal multi-institution consortium in October 2002. Eventually, the consortium plans to include all of the research institutions in Texas that utilize advanced computing resources.

HiPCAT institutions will collaborate on proposals for research funding as well as in the deployment and support of infrastructure. “HiPCAT will be able to leverage Rice’s long-standing leadership in high-performance computing and Grid-enabling tools through Ken Kennedy’s NSF-funded Grid Application Development Software Project,” says Jan Odegard, executive director of the Computer and Information Technology Institute at Rice. “The TIGRE test bed will be an ideal collaborative environment across the state of Texas for Grid research. The potential for collaboration between researchers in Texas universities will greatly benefit the state.”

For more information about HiPCAT, visit http://www.hipcat.net.