In a project with potential commercial significance, scientists at CERN, the Centre for European Research into Nucleonics in Geneva, are trying to determine the feasibility of networking workstations together to provide an integrated computing service comparable with traditional mainframe services. The Scalable Heterogeneous Integrated Facility – SHIFT – project, initiated last year, aims to exploit new workstation technology without losing the quality of service provided by traditional mainframes. This includes the provision of a batch job scheduler, portable Unix magnetic tape support, and tools for the management of large file bases, including automatic staging of data between disk and tape. Secondly, the project will cover development of a processing model enabling systems to be constructed which can be smoothly scaled up to provide very large integrated facilities, compared with the capacity of current high-energy physics computer centres, or down to provide a system suitable for a small physics department. The project also aims to create an environment that supports any versions of Unix and to develop software that is completely portable. Two Sun Microsystems Inc Sun 3/30s and four four-processor Silicon Graphics Inc 4D/340 workstations are operating on a 1Gbps UltraNet, from privately-held Ultra Network Technologies Inc, San Jose. The Silicon Graphics workstations currently access 100Gb disks, which are to be upgraded to 200Gb or 300Gb by the end of this year. CERN is also definitely interested in Sun Microsystems’ new multi-processor machines, says Erik Jagel, a CERN scientific associate on the project. Two DECsystem 5000s also have been taken off the UltraNet due to a delay in the implementation, which is being written by UltraNet itself. The network also includes a Cray X-MP/48 and various peripheral devices. The number of vendors who are supporting high-speed networking are few, says Jagel. You’ve got Silicon Graphics and Sun and IBM is working very hard to get the RS/6000 going. CERN’s original motivation behind developing the Ultranet, he says, was to have the Cray Research Inc supercomputer on the network generating images and to be able to display them in realtime on the workstations. The bandwidth needed is in the tens of megabits, and that was not possible three years ago, says Jagel, but with time, the need for high speed networking has grown. Places like CERN need this kind of networking to feed hungry CPUs.
