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Chapter 4-Gigabit Research 157
expected to be operational until the third quarter
of 1993. After the initial planning stage, the
testbed work during 1990-92 was mainly devoted
to completing hardware development for the
switches and interfaces, theoretical and simu-
lation work on protocols, and development of the
applications software and tools. The next step will
be to integrate these components into a working
network; this will occur in stages over the next
few months. As the networks become operational,
researchers will be able to begin addressing the
unresolved research questions.
Work on the testbeds has been proceeding
more slowly than expected. It had been hoped that
there would be about a year to experiment with
functioning networks before the end of theoriginal 3-year program. Because most of the
networks were not yet operational, a 15-month
extension was granted in order to allow time to
look at network-level issues and test the networks
with applications. The delay has been due to the
late availability of the transmission equipment
and problems with the fabrication of switches and
other hardware components.
I Component Development
During the first 2 years of the testbed project,
the participants have been working mainly on the
completion of the individual network compo-
nents. The SONET transmission equipment has
taken longer than expected to become available,
but is currently being tested and, in some cases,of Wisconsin, and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. A significant part of the work involves the development of
software packages and modules that make it easier for scientists to use distributed supercomputing applications.
For example, NCSA has been developing modules that handle many of the networking functions; these free
scientists of the need to learn all the details of t he network's operation-they can simply incorporate the modules
in their applications. Another project is developing a digital library that allows the user to control the retrieval and
processing of data--one of the programs that can be accessed by this digital library handles visualization
processing, for example.
The applications under development as part of BLANCA could be viewed as prototypes for the Grand
Challenge problems to be investigated under the HPCC program. One important aspect of these problems is that
they will require collaboration between geographically dispersed researchers. The network and computing
environment could support this collaboration by providng facilities for videoconferencing. On a more sophisticated
level, researchers at NCSA have developed a program that permits collaborative investigation of data. It permits
a researcher to highlight a feature in the data displayed on a workstation screen; researchers at other sites would
then see the same feature highlighted on their displays.
The Grand Challenge problems will also involve very large data sets. Processing the data into image form
is computationally intensive, especially when it is necessary to view the data interactively. The University of
Wisconsin and NCSA are investigating the use of high-bandwidth connections from a scientist's workstation to a
supercomputer to provide the necessary computational resources for visualization processing.
A radio astronomy application being studied as part of the BLANCA project is looking at issues involved in
visualizing large data sets. Arrays of radiotelescopes collect the data, which is then sent through the network to
a supercomputer. A user at a workstation connected through a high-bandwidth network to the supercomputer can
control the processing of the raw data into images, which are then sent through the network to the workstation for
display.
SOURCES: BLANCA Annual Report Charles E. Catlett, "In Search of Gigabit Applications," IEEE Communications, vol. 30, No. 4, April
1992, pp. 42-51; Larry Smarr and Charles E. Catlett, "Metacomputing," Communications of the ACM vol. 35, No. 6, June 1992, pp. 45-52;
Carolyn Duffy Marsan, "Gigabit Network at Siggraph Proves Need, Reveals Limits," Federal Computer Week, vol. 6, No. 22, Aug. 3,1992,
p. 1.
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United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment. Advanced Network Technology, report, June 1993; [Washington D.C.]. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc40038/m1/61/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.