The consortium behind the QosCosGrid project completed its work by holding a demonstration and workshop about the system and its applications at the International ACM Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing conference.

 

The consortium, in which AITIA International works along teams from Australia, Israel, Spain, Hungary, France, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, won a grant of the 6. EU Framework Program in 2006.

To complement the conventional experimental and engineering approaches, computer-based simulations of complex natural phenomena and complex man-made artifacts are increasingly employed across a wide range of sectors. Typically, such simulations require computing environments which meet very high specifications in terms of processing units, primary and secondary storage, and communication. Supercomputers constitute the de facto technology to deliver the required specifications. Acquiring, operating and maintaining supercomputers involve considerable costs, which many organizations cannot afford. The working assumption of the QosCosGrid project is that a grid could be enhanced by suitable middleware to provide features and performance characteristics that resemble those of a supercomputer. We refer to such a grid as quasi-opportunistic supercomputer. The QosCosGrid projects aim is to develop such a system.

 

The official concluding report was held after the demonstration, based on which the European Committee - using the recommendations of the reviewers - called the project successful and exemplary.