The Thai National Grid Centre, established late last year and initially named the Thai Grid Project, has drafted a national grid-computing technology development plan for the next three years.

Grid computing applies the resources of many computers in a network to solve a single problem simultaneously, usually a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data.

Putchong Uthayopas, assistant professor at the computer engineering department at Kasetsart University and also director of the Thai National Grid Centre (TNGC), said the aim of grid-computing development was to bring Thailand to the forefront in the field and to build a grid infrastructure, as well as to explore wider adoption of the emerging technology.

The plan comprises four strategies: developing a grid computing infrastructure, training people in grid skills, developing grid applications, and international participation in grid computing. The centre aims to run all four strategies simultaneously.

Implementation of the strategies requires the Thai National Grid Working Group, comprising representatives from all founding members - including the Software Industry Promotion Agency - to be involved. Under the national working group, there would be several other working groups to specifically focus on and oversee the different strategies and projects.

The Grid Resource Working Group is now laying down the grid-computing infrastructure, which once established, will become the largest in Southeast Asia with a performance of one teraflop. "Flop" is an abbreviation for Floating Point Operation per Second, so one teraflop means one trillion operations per second.

Putchong said that of the first year's budget of more than Bt70 million, about Bt50 million will be used to set up a 3.6-teraflop machine at the TNGC, and another Bt14 million for client nodes installed at 14 founding members, such as Kasetsart University, King Mongkut's Institute of Technology North Bangkok, Walailak University in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Suranaree University in Nakhon Ratchasima, the Asia Institute of Technology, Chulalongkorn University, Mahidol University, Chiang Mai University, Silpakorn University, and the Meteorological Department - with five client nodes each.

The three-year budget for the TNGC is set at Bt221.84 million.

"At the centre will be a teraflop machine and 10 client nodes will work in cluster computing, while 70 other client nodes will be located with founding members. At the centre we have two kinds of grid-computing models, since applications require both grid computing and cluster computing," said Putchong.

To promote wider adoption of grid computing, it is crucial to train people, so the TNGC plans courses in all three layers of the technology - grid-user level, grid-developer level, and grid-engineer level.

All founding members will initiate grid-computing courses, both as a principal course and selective courses for students to learn the technology. It will also provide short-term courses for graduates or people interested in becoming certified by the TGNC.

It aims to build skills in grid computing with about 3,000 people by 2009, of which about 10 to 15 per cent will be engineers, 25 to 30 per cent developers, and 60 per cent users.

To encourage learning about grid computing across wider areas, Putchong said proof-of-concept applications were needed to persuade bigger groups of people to become interested and take advantage of the emerging technology.

The centre has set up five focused areas of grid applications - life sciences (biotechnology, drug design, and biomedical); digital media (animation and multimedia); enterprise computing; computer science and engineering (mainly for the automobile industry); and education (grid teaching, and electronic learning by grid).

"All founding members need to build their own single flagship application within these five focused areas.

"This is to prove the benefits of grid-computing technology," said Putchong.

From scientific and academic research, the grid-computing concept could be transferred to business and other government high-performance computing applications such as weather forecasting, said Putchong. He said the centre would always be working to promote Thailand's grid-computing development to global levels by participating in international conferences as well as setting up websites.

Putchong hopes this will increase national competitiveness and inspire global companies to invest more in Thailand, as well as improve the country's infrastructure and skilled resources. It will also help to open more opportunities for research and development locally, as most research requires high performance in computer technology.

"In the long run, this teraflop grid-computing infrastructure will offer Thailand the opportunity to provide global outsourcing."

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation