In the future, in the digital fabric, computing elements will be distinguished by their networked bandwidth, compute and data capabilities, and of course their particular input/output capabilities (e.g. graphical displays, cameras, GPS, laser range-finding, etc.). These elements will be knit into large scale distributed applications and resource pools - together an entity increasingly known as the "computational grid". The key capabilities of a "Grid" element will be determined largely by their communication and input/output capabilities.
We propose a research infrastructure (FWGrid) that enables research in innovative and radically new applications, systems and system architectures, and the emerging technical and even social use of systems and services built for technology environment of the future. The key aspects of this infrastructure are: o highly capable mobile image/video capture and display devices (to interact with the world) o high bandwidth wireless 100-500 Mbps (to tightly couple mobile elements to high capability resources), o rich wired networks of 10-100Gbps (move and aggregate data and computation without limit), and o distributed clusters with large compute (teraflops) and data (10's of terabytes) capabilities (to power the infrastructure).
Broader Impact: FWGrid will enable us to explore with real systems and users, radical new applications, novel application structures, system architecture, resource management policies, innovative algorithms, as well as system management. It will fundamentally enhance undergraduate and graduate education and all activities of the department. Because FWGrid will be a "living laboratory", we will gain access to real users and actual workloads. FWGrid models the world of five years hence, where widespread high bandwidth wireless, extreme wired (fiber) bandwidth, and plentiful wired computing and data resource are the norm. FWGrid will be used to support a wide variety of research, ranging from low-level network measurement and analysis, to grid middleware and modeling, to application-oriented middleware and new distributed application architecture and finally to higher level applications using rich image and video - both off and on line.
FWGrid will have a transformative impact on the department, accelerating our growth into experimental computer science, continuing the transform and broaden both undergraduate and graduate education, providing a modern Grid infrastructure on which to perform research experiments, but one that also extends to wireless and peer-to-peer computing/storage. Because of the fortuitous timing with respect to our new CSE building, the infrastructure will have a deep impact on the department's educational, research, and social environment. It will support experimental research, multi-faculty and multi-disciplinary collaborative research and education. FWGrid will form a nexus for systems research within the department, and couple all of us to researchers on the campus, to SDSC and CalIT2, the metropolitan area, and wide area at high bandwidth. This will enable innumerable shared experiments and collaboration. In short, it will couple us to the future at high speed.
