A Closer Look at the Media Grid

By By Derrick Harris, Editor

August 21, 2006

A few weeks ago when the Grid Institute announced that Sun Microsystems had joined on as an official Media Grid partner, it served notice that Media Grid, a project offering a utility computing model for digital media content, is now accepting commercial partners looking to be involved in this cutting edge project.

While Sun is the first vendor to officially sign on, Grid Institute director Aaron Walsh said other leading vendors are showing interest. Currently, he said, individuals from companies like HP, Oracle and IBM are working on the project, and he believes it is very possible that these companies will join now that membership has been opened.

The Media Grid operates using a three-tiered organizational model: the Grid Institute, which manages business relationships and setting up and managing the network; MediaGrid.org, which is responsible for developing the grid's open standards; and the academic tier, which seeks out grants and performs research on the Media Grid. Vendor partners like Sun are given the opportunity to participate in both the Grid Institute — where they can have input on the overall direction of the project, intellectual property agreements, etc. — and MediaGrid.org — where individuals from partner companies participate in technical working groups looking to develop the open standards on which the Media Grid is basing its value proposition to users. In addition, companies or organizations that wish to provide HPC resources to the Media Grid will receive payment or time credits.

The academic tier is led by Boston College, and also includes institutions from around the globe, including Japan's University of Aizu and Singapore's Institute of High Performance Computing. Walsh said he expects more Japanese involvement, as well as involvement from China and Taiwan, in the future. “A key to this is international collaboration with companies, universities and other government infrastructures,” he said.

As for Sun's involvement, it will be serving the roles of both service provider and technical resource, as the company is offering part of its Sun Grid as a resource, and will be “intimately involved” in standards activity. Aisling MacRunnels, Sun's senior director of utility computing, said its partnership with the Media Grid is based on natural synergy — especially seeing as how the standards-based, multi-tenant model being sought for the Media Grid is currently being done with the Sun Grid. Standards development is really a key element to the partnership, though.

“We're a huge supporter of standards,” said MacRunnels. “We believe, especially in this area, it is critical that we align standards as we drive to grid-based utilities.”

As part of its standards work, Dan Hushon, Sun Grid senior director and chief technologist, has been appointed a one-year fellowship to work with several of the MediaGrid.org working groups.

Of course, all this talk about standards is not without a good reason. As was noted earlier, open standards are one of the main selling points for the Media Grid, as they eliminate the threat of vendor lock-in.

“The user has no idea where the job is being executed for a reason,” said Walsh. “We take away the proprietary nature of the vendor and we give an open standard that does the routing and does the custom job creation and handing off to the backend service provider. What that gives the user is transparency.”

In fact, the Media Grid already has one potential user raring to go once the standards are adopted and the grid is ready for public use: Cambridge, Mass.- based drug development company Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The company, which currently uses a 120-processor Linux cluster for its HPC needs, is actually willing to commit heavily into the Media Grid.

Paul Dupuis, Vertex's senior director of information technology, said he is sick of playing the upgrade game with in-house clusters, and would prefer utilizing a utility service for his HPC needs. However, he noted, current utility options require too much vendor lock-in, which is why he is so keen on the Media Grid. “Media Grid intrigues me because of their efforts to develop a standardized protocol that spans across different platform, manufacturers and vendors for parallel computing,” said Dupuis.

That said, Dupuis concedes that because the Media Grid is not yet ready for public use, Vertex is still quite a ways from running jobs on it. “Standards body participation is really hard to guess,” he said. “It could happen in a matter of months, or it could be another year or two years or three years before the standards are really approved and settled upon.”

He noted, though, that he hopes it's sooner rather than later. “We're poised to basically commit far more fully once the standards are in place.”

In fact, the extent to which Vertex is willing to commit shows a lot of faith in the Media Grid to provide truly reliable, powerful service for the digital media community. Dupuis said the company not only will buy cycles through the Media Grid, but also will likely contribute its in-house cluster as a resource on the grid. “Much beyond that, I suspect we'll probably at some point get out of the business of having a [cluster] here in-house and move entirely to a utility computing model,” he added. The Grid Institute's Walsh noted that some individuals at Turner Broadcasting are looking into a similar arrangement.

While Vertex certainly would be a pioneering user of the public, commercial version of the Media Grid, there already have been users from the academic and non-profit sectors. Two specific examples Walsh cited are the Immersive Education program at Boston College, which uses virtual reality in virtual classrooms over the Internet, and the U.S. Marine Corps' Toys for Tots program, which has used the Media Grid for the last few years to deliver a variety of public service announcements on its Web site, and is now furthering its use with the launch of TotsTV.

Scheduled to launch in December to benefit the Toys for Tots Foundation, the family-friendly online channel features, among other things: high-quality video (television shows and movies), music and interactive games for children of all ages; education and learning content designed to teach children while they watch, listen and play; and a simple, easy-to-use interface designed exclusively for children and young adults. TotsTV is a “child safe” channel in the Media Grid's larger Media on Demand (MoD) system, and is receiving rendering and storage services and interactive 3-D capabilities from Media Grid partners Sun Microsystems (via Sun Grid) and Media Machines (via its Flux solution), respectively.

Further illustrating the synergy between Sun Grid and the Media Grid, Sun's MacRunnels added, “As they roll out TotsTV, etc., they really need that type of standard interface, such that they can acquire and use content across the board. A lot of what we're trying to do just resonates very well with where they're driving.”

However, regardless of what projects are underway, what partners join or what companies are lining up to access the Media Grid once it is made public, the bottom line is that there is a long way to go before before it is ready for mass consumption. However, Vertex's Dupuis, clearly a big supporter of the project, believes Walsh, with his history in standards development, will drive the Media Grid to success.

“I have the confidence,” Dupuis said, “that if there is anybody out there who can actually get all the major business players to agree, adopt and endorse a set of standards in this area over time, it's Aaron.”

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire