Press Release

October 3, 2007

SAGE-enabled Cyberspace Demonstration over GLORIAD Takes Place as Part of Sputnik Celebration

For more information:

Ravil R. Nazirov,
Deputy Director, Space Research Institute, RAS
rnazirov@rssi.ru

MOSCOW, CHICAGO and AMSTERDAM -- Fifty years ago, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I — little more than a beeping metal ball — into space. Never before had an artificial satellite orbited the Earth. Sputnik I advanced the future of space travel, and this week, its historically significant launch was marked with a global networking demonstration that advances the future of cyber travel.

At Russia’s International Forum for the 50th anniversary of Sputnik I, a five-day celebration of the historic launch being held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, guests attending a special demonstration at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Space Research Institute (IKI) in Moscow saw high-resolution animations streamed from the United States and the Netherlands to Russia over GLORIAD research and education networks using visualization middleware called the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE).

For this demonstration, scientific visualizations were streamed from data stores in Chicago and Amsterdam to a tiled display wall at the IKI. Animations of the Milky Way galaxy and a tornado, both developed by the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), were streamed at one gigabit-per-second to Moscow’s IKI from disks at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) in Chicago, and from the SARA Computing and Networking Services supercomputer center in Amsterdam.

This demonstration was organized by the Russia-USA GLORIAD team and by the Global Lambda Visualization Facility (GLVF), an international team of computer and application scientists, founded by EVL, which strives to create integrated tools for domain scientists, enabling them to conduct real-time, interactive visualization and distance collaboration using large-scale tiled displays over optical networks. EVL’s SAGE is used as a tool for managing multiple high-resolution data streams over these networks. And, these advanced optical networks are cooperatively shared for scientific experimentation through an organization called the Global Lambda Integrated Facility, or GLIF.

Larry Smarr, Calit2 director, OptIPuter principal investigator and GLIF Research & Applications (RAP) Working Group co-chair, congratulated the principal investigator and GLVF team, noting that “The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded OptIPuter project has produced tiled display walls running SAGE, which we call OptIPortals, that are 21st-century PCs that connect researchers with collaborators and remote data stores worldwide. In 2005, when GLVF was created, the GLIF RAP Working Group challenged GLVF to create a persistent global environment in which researchers could work with colleagues and their data. GLVF continues to attract and work with new participants to create this global environment over the GLIF fabric, and we welcome the involvement of Moscow's Space Research Institute and Russia's new optical network that connects MoscowLight to NetherLight in Amsterdam.”

GLORIAD is a collaborative project to build a fiber-optic ring of networks around the northern hemisphere of the Earth. For this demonstration, the following network links and exchanges participated: the NSF-funded TransLight/StarLight link that goes from the StarLight exchange in Chicago to the NetherLight exchange in Amsterdam; the Netherlands’ SURFnet network from SARA to from NetherLight; and the Russian link, owned and managed by the Russian Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute” (RRC“KI”) in partnership with the Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN), that goes from NetherLight to the MoscowLight exchange, and then to IKI. A gigabit lightpath was dedicated to the SAGE testbed from Chicago (StarLight), to Amsterdam (NetherLight) and then on to Moscow (MoscowLight).

“Fifty years have passed, and, ‘as big things are seen clearly from a distance,’ October 4, 1957 is the beginning of the Space Age,” said Dr. L. M. Zeleniy, Director of IKI, Associate Member of RAS. “Space became accessible to humankind, and what had been previously hidden by Earth's powerful gravitational fields, atmosphere and ionosphere, was opened up for exploration. This International Forum commemorating Sputnik is stimulating many pointed and profound discussions. Among the exhibition highlights is the USA-Russia-Netherlands international demonstration of the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment. SAGE is one of many advanced tools that will help scientists as they try to better understand the many riddles of Space that remain to be solved,” said Dr. Zeleniy.

“This anniversary program of seminars, conferences and exhibitions marks an historic date of October 4, 1957, and celebrates fifty years of modern Space exploration,” said Academician E.P. Velikhov, President of RRC “KI” and leader of GLORIAD/Russia. “Space and information technology has fundamentally changed the world around us, creating a bridge between the physical and virtual worlds, and making it is possible for scientists to directly participate in research collaboration across countries and around the globe. This high-resolution streaming demonstration is significant progress in the international collaboration capabilities now being made possible through the efforts of GLIF and GLVF in support of scientific discovery.”

GLORIAD partners who participated in the demonstration include: GLORIAD-USA (University of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Laboratory Joint Institute for Computational Sciences, and UIC/EVL); GLORIAD-Netherlands (SURFnet, SARA and University of Amsterdam); and, GLORIAD-Russia (RRC“KI” and RIPN, in collaboration with IKI).

Acknowledgment
Jorrit Adraanse, Erik-Jan Bos, Michael Boyarsky, Maxine Brown, Natalia Bulashova, Greg Cole, Cees de Laat, Thomas DeFanti, Paola Grosso, Ratko Jagodic, Byungil Jeong, Jason Leigh, Joe Mambretti, Ravil Nazirov, Kees Neggers, Larry Smarr, Alexey Soldatov, Olga Starostina, Alexey Platonov, Bram Peeters, Luc Renambot, Ronald van der Pol, J.P. Velders, Evgeny P.Velikhov, Alan Verlo, Paul Wielinga, Linda Winkler, Laura Wolf, Lev M. Zeleniy, Mikhail Zhizhin, NetherLight NOC, RBnet NOC, StarLight NOC

ABOUT:

Russia’s International Forum on SPACE : SCIENCE and Challenges of the XXI Century www.cosmos.ru/oct4/2007/index_e.htm

GLORIAD
The GLORIAD (Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development) advanced science internet network was launched in January 2004 by the USA, Russia and China, expanded its reach in 2005 – to Korea, Canada and The Netherlands – and in 2006 to the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland. GLORIAD provides an optical network ring encircling the northern hemisphere of the globe with individual network circuits up to 10 Gbps – promoting new opportunities for cooperation for scientists, educators and students. The GLORIAD project is supported by the Ministry of Science and Education of Russian Federation, the National Science Foundation of USA, the USA Research & Education (R&E) network National LambdaRail, the Chinese Academy of Science, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Korea, Canadian non-profit association CANARIE, the national R&E network of Netherlands SURFnet, the national R&E network of the Nordic Countries NORDUnet, as well as a number of other organizations representing countries which participate in the project. GLORIAD/USA is based at the University of Tennessee – Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Joint Institute for Computation Science. GLORIAD/Russia is based at the Russian Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow and managed by Russian Institute for Public Networks. GLORIAD/Netherlands is based in Amsterdam and managed by SURFnet. For more information, see www.gloriad.org

Grid Laboratory, Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences
The Grid laboratory at the Space research Institute, Academy of Sciences was founded in 2006 Its primary goal is to conduct basic and applied research in the fields of info-telecommunication area. For more information, see www.cosmos.ru

NetherLight/SURFnet, The Netherlands
NetherLight is the GLIF Open Lightpath Exchange (GOLE) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has been operational since January 2002. SURFnet enables breakthrough education and research. SURFnet develops and operates the National SURFnet6 network and provides innovative services in the areas of security, authentication and authorisation, group communication and video. Over 750,000 academics, staff and students in higher education and research in the Netherlands have daily access to the Internet using SURFnet6. SURFnet is a partner in SURF, the organisation for innovative ICT facilities in which academic universities, universities of applied sciences and research institutions collaborate at the national and international levels.For more information, see: NetherLight and SURFnet

Russian Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”
The Russian Research Center “Kurchatov Institute”, Russia’s leading research and development institution in the field of nuclear energy, was founded in 1943. The Kurchatov Institute is funded through the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and through international cooperation and commercial projects. It is divided into 15 institutes and six scientific and technological divisions. The Institute conducts research on controlled thermonuclear fusion, plasma physics, solid state physics, superconductivity, molecular physics, physical and inorganic chemistry, chemical physics, chemistry, safety of new technologies, ecology and health, biology, genomics and bioinformatics, biotechnology, element basis of microelectronics, material science, nanotechnology, networking and information science. The RRC “KI” is the founder of Russia’s Internet and the Russian Research and Education network, and the Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN). GLORIAD/Russia is based at the RRC “KI” and managed by the Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN). For more information, see www.kiae.ru

Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN)
Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN) was founded in 1992 by the Science and Higher School Committee of Russia, Russian Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" and the Computer Center of the Kurchatov Institute. RIPN operates the Russian Backbone Network and MoscowLight facility, supports Technical Center of national domain TLD .RU and develops public Internet Exchanges in the largest cities of Russia. RIPN is GLORIAD/Russia’s network operator. For more information, see www.ripn.net

Russian Backbone Network (RBNet) (since 1996)
Russian Backbone Network (since 1996) is a backbone that serves regional, specialized and corporate networks for Research and Education. At present, it is a high-speed IP network with Points-of-Presence (POPs) in all Federal Regions of Russia, and is migrating to a Hybrid Network Infrastructure. Recently, RBNet established the GLIF Open Lambda Exchange (GOLE) Facility, MoscowLight, to support the Hybrid Network Infrastructure, a 10 Gbps link from Moscow (MoscowLight) to Amsterdam (NetherLight)a lightpath between Moscow, Amsterdam and Chicago. RBNet will soon establish a 2.5Gbps - Moscow - Khabarovsk link, with a connection to Hong Kong (HKOEP-HKLight) and Korea (KRLight). For more information, see www.rbnet.ru

SAGE
SAGE enables researchers to create real-time shared “cyber-mash-ups" of extremely high-resolution content on scalable tiled display walls over high-speed networks, including stored scientific-visualization movies, real-time generated visualizations of computational simulations, and camera-based streams. The SAGE architecture uses distributed rendering clusters connected by high-bandwidth networks to stream multiple applications to a class of scalable tiled displays that are fast becoming a standard for scientific distance collaboration. Using SAGE, several applications—including high-resolution 2D imagery, 3D computer graphics and high definition video—can be streamed and viewed simultaneously. SAGE is being developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago as part of the NSF-funded OptIPuter project. See: www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/sage

SARA
SARA Computing and Networking Services is an advanced ICT service center that supplies - since more than 30 years - a complete package of high performance computing & visualization, high performance networking and infrastructure services. Among SARA's customers are the business community and scientific, educational, and government institutions.

SARA is an independent organization with offices in Amsterdam and Almere, and collaborations with many partners. As national e-Science Support Center, SARA participates in a large number of national and international partnerships: DEISA (Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications), EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-sciencE), VL-e (Virtual Laboratory for e-Science), NBIC (Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre), BioRange, Research on Networks (GigaPort Next Generation), OptIPuter, Phosphorus en CineGrid.

SARA’s product portfolio consists of:
* High Performance Computing & Visualization: facilities and services in supercomputing, data storage, visualization and virtual reality;
* High Performance Networking: design, installation and management of advanced Wide Area Networks;
* ICT Services: housing and management for third parties of critical infrastructures, systems, applications and connectivity.
The most eye-catching activities and facilities of SARA are the National Supercomputers Aster and Huygens, the National Compute Cluster Lisa, the academic high-bandwidth network SURFnet, and the Virtual Reality facility, the CAVE™. SARA is one of the locations of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), one of the largest Internet exchanges in the world.
An important addition to the available facilities is SARA's thorough expertise and the resulting consultancy and support activities.For more information, see www.sara.nl

Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Space Research, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), is the leading RAS organization in scientific research areas such as: Outer Space, Solar System planets and other objects of the Universe. The Space Research Institute (IKI) is primarily in charge of long-range planning and elaboration of space research programs, of which a considerable part is performed within the framework of international space research cooperation. For more information, see www.iki.rssi.ru/eng/index.htm

StarLight
StarLight is an advanced optical infrastructure and proving ground for network services optimized for high-performance applications. StarLight is the GLIF Open Lightpath Exchange (GOLE) in Chicago. Operational since summer 2001, StarLight has 1GE and 10GE switch/router facilities and true optical switching for wavelengths. StarLight is being developed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, and the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, in partnership with Canada's CANARIE and the Netherlands' SURFnet. StarLight is a service mark of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. See more: www.startap.net/starlight

TransLight/StarLight
In cooperation with USA and European National Research & Education Networks, TransLight/StarLight is implementing a strategy to best serve established USA and European production science, including usage by those scientists, engineers and educators who have persistent large-flow, real-time, and/or other advanced application requirements. TransLight/StarLight currently provides two connections between the USA and Europe for production science: a routed connection that connects the pan-European GÉANT2 to the USA Internet2, National LambdaRail and ESnet networks, and a switched connection that is part of the LambdaGrid fabric being created by participants of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF). Major funding is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation International Research Network Connections (IRNC) program, award OCI-0441094 to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), for the period February 2005 - January 2010.See more: www.startap.net/translight

University of Amsterdam, Systems and Networking Engineering Research Group
The System and Network Engineering (SNE) Research group at the University of Amsterdam researches cross-domain interaction between Grid resource providers, optical and hybrid networking, resource descriptions using semantic web and programmable networks for the Future Internet. In collaboration with SURFnet and SARA, UvA has capabilities to access high-speed optical test bed installations in the optical photonic backbone of SURFnet in the Netherlands and internationally in the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF). SARA and UvA collaborate in the creation, maintenance and utilization of a state of the art Lambda Grid experimentation laboratory named LightHouse, which is very well connected to NetherLight. UvA is a founding member and key contributor to CineGrid, GLIF and OGF www.science.uva.nl/research/sne/

University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is a graduate research laboratory specializing in the design and development of high-resolution visualization and virtual-reality display systems, collaboration software for use on multi-gigabit networks, and advanced networking infrastructure. It is a joint effort of UIC's College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, and represents the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the country offering graduate MS, PhD and MFA degrees. EVL has received worldwide recognition for developing the original CAVE™ and ImmersaDesk® virtual reality systems; and, more recently, the 105-Megapixel LambdaVision tiled display and Varrier autostereoscopic display. EVL is a founding member of StarLight the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) and the Global Lambda Visualization Facility (GLVF), and with Calit2/UCSD is a leading institution working on the NSF-funded OptIPuter project. See: www.evl.uic.edu

University of Tennessee – Oak Ridge National Laboratory JICS and
The University of Tennessee (UT) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) established the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences (JICS) to advance scientific discovery and state-of-the-art engineering and to further knowledge of computational modeling and simulation by taking full advantage of the terascale and beyond computers in the National Center for Computational Sciences housed at ORNL, and by educating a new generation of scientists and engineers well-versed in the application of computational modeling and simulation for solving for the most challenging scientific and engineering problems. GLORIAD/USA based at UT-ORNL JICS. For more information, see www.gloriad.org/gloriad/team/usa/index.html and www.jics.utk.edu