![[LRZ logo]](/pic/lrzlogo.gif)
The LRZ is participating in the project "Uniform Interface to Computing Resources" (UNICORE), which was funded from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project was initially planed as a "proof of concept" for the duration from mid of 1997 to the mid of 1999 and was complemented for a round of and a prototypical end-user operation by a successive project UNICORE Plus, which ran until end of 2002.
The contribution of the LRZ consists in testing the
developed prototype, preparing its deployment for high
performance computers and operating the respective Certification
Authority.
An overview over the LRZ computers, on which UNICORE is
currently deployed, you can find here.
The progress in high performance computing have led to the emergence of a new discipline called Computational Science and Engineering which supplements the traditional scientific pillars experiment and theory so significantly, that completely new dimensions for the examination of natural phenomena and technological problems become feasible. At times computational research turns out to be the only instrument for examination, if the size of the laboratory marks the strong limitation for a problem normally accessible via experiment. Since high performance computers can not be located at every scientist's work place due to economical reasons and since their utilization is afflicted on top of everyting with especially sophisticated rules (on the part of the maintainer) and syntactical peculiarities (on the part of the computer and software supplier), it is a exceptionally urgent task to reduce this complicatedness by simpler, more uniform mechanisms for the access to these heterogeneous computers.
The aim of the project UNICORE is to produce a seamless infrastructure specifically designed for the use of high performance computers typically deployed state- or nationwide, which allows the research projects to formulate computational job without a detailed knowledge about the respective computer fabricate (command syntax, job queue management, etc.), attach it with the required resource descriptions and approve it for processing. For this purpose a graphical user interface was created, which is then converted to the commandos of the respective computer system by the UNICORE system. Another task to solve is how to identify authorized users across states and national borders.