ITR: ASE: INT: DMC: UltraLight: An Ultrascale Information System for Data Intensive Research

This ITR proposal is a request for funding to develop and deploy UltraLight, the first of a new class of integrated information systems that will support the decades-long research program at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and other next generation sciences. Physicists at the LHC face unprecedented challenges: (1) massive, globally distributed datasets growing to the 100 petabyte level by 2010; (2) petaflops of distributed computing; and (3) collaborative data analysis by global communities of thousands of scientists. In response to these challenges, the Grid-based infrastructures developed by the LHC collaborations provide massive computing and storage resources, but are limited by their treatment of the network as an external, passive, and largely unmanaged resource.

UltraLight will overcome these limitations by monitoring, managing and optimizing the use of the network in realtime, using a distributed set of intelligent global services. The UltraLight hybrid packet- and circuit-switched network infrastructure will employ ultrascale protocols and dynamic building of optical paths to provide efficient fair-sharing on long range networks up to the 10 Gbps range.

UltraLight's scope offers exciting and unusual educational outreach opportunities for students. It provides direct and significant support for E&O activities including: application development, experiment participation, infrastructure deployment, and internships at participating institutions. Existing outreach programs within the GriPhyN, iVDGL, and e-VLBI Grid projects, as well as Florida International University's CHEPREO and CIARA programs, will be exploited to attract undergraduates to physics and math, and to inject new important elements of information technology into core graduate science domains.