System to allow software
sharing
By Steven Poland
Staff
Writer
Imagine being able to run any application in the
world through a web browser, without the software.
If you needed to create a logo for your graphic
design class and you didn't have Adobe PhotoShop on the computer you're
using, it wouldn't be a problem.
A system at Purdue has been creating a worldwide
computational grid that allows people to do just that. Users of the
grid no longer have to purchase software but are able to run programs
remotely over the Internet.
The system is called the Purdue University Network
Computing Hubs, or PUNCH, and is a network computer that provides access
to programs from 16 universities, four research centers and six companies.
This has suddenly, within the last year or so,
become a very hot field, said Mark Lundstrom, a professor of electrical
and computer engineering.
Companies called application service providers
are beginning to jump into this. The advantage that Purdue has is that
Purdue has been working on it for five years now. Purdue has learned
what it takes to make it work, said Lundstrom.
Primarily being used by engineers that require
highly specialized software for research and teaching, the system not
only makes the software accessible to the entire research community,
but it also automatically enables computer users to run the software
via their own computers through a Web browser.
The software does not actually run on the users
computers, it runs on a server somewhere, said Nirav Kapadia, a senior
research scientist responsible for developing the underlying software
that makes the PUNCH system possible.
Kapadia said it enables whatever you are running
on your server to interface with a distant computer.
PUNCH runs much like the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (SETI@home) project. SETI@home uses thousands of Internet-connected
PCs to help in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The idea
behind SETI@home is to take advantage of the unused processing cycles
of personal computers. PUNCH can automatically find resources, anywhere
in the nation, that users need to do their work.
If you are running a high-level simulation and
it requires a supercomputer, it can look around for a supercomputer
that isn't being used at the time, or one that is being least used,
and send the job there, said Lundstrom.
Unavailable commercially, Kapadia said he would
love to see PUNCH evolve into a commercial computational grid. But that
would pose challenges.
Lundstrom said that the software vendors would
have to sort out how to license and charge for this service because
the implication is that people would not have to buy software anymore.
More information can be found at the Web site http://www.nanohub.purdue.edu/.
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