The cloud model is increasingly popular as a means of creating dynamic, flexible and cost effective network-centric application infrastructures. The model separates the applications, or application cloud, from the resources, or resource cloud, upon which the applications will be hosted. There are an increasing number of utility resource providers that aim to provide cloud infrastructure on demand to users and libraries that aim to manage owned infrastructure as a resource cloud. There is, unfortunately, no common API for cloud resources and it is unlikely that one will emerge soon given the immaturity of the area and the competing commercial interests in the domain. In this paper, we outline our commodity and application-centric approach to resource management, and describe our integration framework for cloud application management-illustrating its use in a field deployed application and a particular dynamic component within that application.

Unreliability is a characteristic feature of Web and grid based computation: a call to a Web or grid site may or may not succeed. An orchestration manager aims to control Web or grid behaviour by constructing dynamic threads which acquire and utilise appropriate resources. For example, in an orchestration, a site may be called and may fail to respond after a period of time. Subsequently, the site may be recalled, or an alternative site may be utilised. In this paper approaches to estimating the reliability and cost of complex orchestrations are proposed. It is assumed that information about site reliability can be accessed from empirically acquired information.

One of the challenges for the grid community is to develop services to support both shared computation and shared information. As a part of this development, it is necessary to convert laboratories to pervasive computing environments (smart laboratories) where data generated in the laboratories can be captured and published automatically; where information generated can be combined and compound with other laboratories’ data on demand. In this paper, we describe one such initiative to capture and consume the data generated by the nucleotide sequencer in the grid enabled automated analysis system called GeneGrid developed at the Belfast e-Science Centre.

GeneGrid is a collaborative industrial R&D project initiated by the Belfast e-Science Centre, under the UK e-Science Programme, with commercial partners involved in the research and development of antibodies and drugs. GeneGrid provides a platform for scientists, especially biologists, to access their collective skills, experiences and results in a secure, reliable and scalable manner through the creation of a 'Virtual Bioinformatics Laboratory'. It enables the seamless integration of a myriad of heterogeneous applications and datasets that span multiple administrative domains and locations across the globe, and present these to the scientist through a simple user friendly interface. This paper presents how the grid services of GeneGrid are involved in the integration of bioinformatics applications as well as in the creation and execution of in silico experiments. A real use case scenario is also presented, involving the identification of novel members belonging to a protein family, for demonstrating the capabilities of GeneGrid.

This paper presents a domain configuration grid service which provides a service configuration and lifecycle management mechanism for a grid infrastructure employing a service oriented architecture (SOA). A SOA grid infrastructure is typically composed of numerous domains, which in turn are typically composed of numerous services. A grid usually exists to achieve a set of pre-defined goals; therefore services must interoperate possibly across independent domains to meet the objective(s). This paper details a discussion of the reasons why service configuration and lifecycle management is required in a loosely coupled distributed system, in particular a grid SOA system named Gridcast. In order to avail of the benefits offered by a loosely coupled system it is important to maintain an efficient grid, this paper presents a number of service configuration and lifecycle management strategies which aim to achieve that goal

In 2001, the UK government announced new funding for an initiative known as e-Science. This initiative was challenged with developing a new way of collaborative research using grid as the information utility. The initiative was structured to provide funding to support a national grid infrastructure, tackle large scale scientific research problems and to engage in projects with industry. This paper considers the impact of e-Science in the UK and, in particular, in the finance and life sciences sectors.

Recent developments in the international arena has meant the technology is now mature enough to bring together those required for the implementation of a grid computing facility. This paper examines the requirements and applications for an eScience infrastructure with particular reference to developments in Europe.

This paper outlines the design of an automatic source-to-source translator which can accept a program written in a subset of Fortran90 and determine a data distribution scheme (including, where beneficial, dynamic redistributions) for the arrays of the program. The translator generates a semantically equivalent Fortran90 program incorporating the distribution scheme in the form of language extensions. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract This article is concerned with the topic of parallel programming language design and implementation, with particular emphasis on the developments which are, and have been, taking place in Europe. Consideration is given to specific approaches to parallel programming with illustrative examples taken from projects which have been carried out in Europe. The paper is based on a report prepared for the European Commission during 1990.

Abstract This paper considers a method for evaluating the concurrent programming language available on a multiprocessor system – in particular, a shared‐memory multiprocessor system. The method is based on the consideration of well‐known algorithms which have been used as a means of demonstrating the expressive power of new concurrent language constructs. The algorithms considered are the Readers and Writers Problem and the Drinking Philosophers Problem. Both algorithms are coded using features that are widely regarded as being state‐of‐the‐art for shared‐memory systems and are then recoded in the language available on an actual multiprocessor system in order to carry out a comparison and evaluation. Several observations and conclusions are drawn.

Abstract The increasing availability and use of supercomputers has highlighted the need for better software development techniques and tools. Supercomputers have traditionally been extensively used by engineers and scientists whose preference for Fortran is well established and recognized. However, in the parallel environment offered by the latest configurations of supercomputers, more sophisticated languages and tools are required. The present experiment is concerned with devising a syntax‐directed integrated programming environment based on the language Actus, which enables a user to develop and debug programs before submitting them to an actual supercomputer. Actus is a high‐level, Pascal‐like language, with SIMD parallel processing features. It enables the user to ignore the idiosyncrasies of the chosen supercomputer by abstracting the parallel processing detail to a higher level. The editing, compilation and testing phases of program development are all integrated, providing a single consistent interface for all activities relating to program development.

Abstract This paper describes a high‐level programming system for constructing vector and array processor based software involving the parallel language Actus. The system functions on a cross‐computer basis where a programmer develops Actus programs in a form that can be tested and transferred to the chosen supercomputer. The principles involved are, however, applicable to other similar block‐structured high‐level languages.

A compiler for a Pascal-based language Actus is described. The language is suitable for the expression of the type of parallelism offered by both array and vector processors. The implementation described is for the Cray-1 computer. An objective of the implementation has been to construct an optimizing compiler which can be readily adapted for a range of array and vector processors. As a result the machine-dependent sections of the compiler have been clearly identified.

Abstract Matrix multiplication is used as an example to illustrate a method of transforming the specification of a problem into an algorithm suitable for execution on synchronous machines. The transformations are influenced both by the architectures of the target machines and their available high level languages. Three different synchronous machines, a conceptual MCC (mesh connected computer), the Cray‐1 and the ICL DAP are considered as target hardware.

Abstract This paper describes, in an informal manner, the programming language ACTUS which was designed to facilitate programming array processing and vector processing ‘supercomputers’. ACTUS extends the program structuring and data structuring facilities of Pascal to the synchronous parallel environment as represented by array and vector processor architectures. A knowledge of Pascal is assumed and only the parallel features of ACTUS are described.

Abstract This paper reports on a programming experiment involving the languages Fortran and Pascal. The subject of the experiment was the simulation of the X‐ray department of a local hospital. The programming was carried out by two different programmers at different periods of time. A static analysis was performed on both models to determine how the languages were used by both programmers. The compilation and execution speeds of both models were then determined when executed on an ICL 1906S computer. The results indicate that the Pascal program is substantially faster in both compilation and execution speed than an equivalent Fortran program.

Abstract This paper summarizes the major results of a formal survey of array processor users and indicates how these results were used in the design of a language suitable for array and vector processors. A comparison is also given with an informal survey of other large‐scale computer users, which concluded that the best plan was to extend Fortran 77 to meet the requirements for array processing.

An experiment to test an operating systems simulation language SIMONE (based on PASCAL) on a more normal simulation problem is described. The actual problem chosen was the Radiology Department of a hospital, a model of which had already been constructed in FORTRAN. This enabled not only an evaluation of SIMONE to be performed but also a comparison with the FORTRAN model to be undertaken. The comparison data showed a substantial reduction in the timings for the SIMONE model. The advantages of using a language with appropriate simulation features, richer data and control structures, good debugging and tracing facilities were also evident.

The scientific community has consistently demanded from computing machines an increase in the number of instructions executed per second. The latest increase has been achieved by duplication of arithmetic units for an array processor and the pipelining of functional units for vector processors. The high level programming languages for such machines have not benefited from the advances which have been made in programming language design and implementation techniques. A high level language is described in this paper which is appropriate for both array and vector processors and is defined without reference to the hardware of either type of machine. The syntax enables the parallel nature of a problem to be expressed in a form which can be readily exploited by these machines. This is achieved by using the data declarations to indicate the maximum extent of parallel processing and then to manipulate this, or a lesser extent, in the course of program execution. It was found to be possible to modify many of the structured programming and data structuring concepts for this type of parallel environment and to maintain the benefits of compile time and run time checking. Several special constructs and operators are also defined. The language offers to the large scale scientific computing community many of the advances which have been made in software engineering techniques while it exploits the architectural advances which have been made.

Abstract A description of different methods of program tracing in a quasiparallel environment is given together with an automatic tracing facility implemented in SIMONE. 1 The methods are then compared and evaluated on the basis of their ease of use, flexibility, selectivity, trace output, space required and time overhead.

Abstract This paper describes SIMONE, an extension of PASCAL,1 which provides the quasiparallel programming facility of SIMULA 67, but without classes or references. The language is intended to be suitable for the design, testing and simulation of operating system algorithms. It is illustrated by simple examples, suitable as project material in a course on operating systems. A simple, restricted, but efficient implementation is described. It is suggested that the language might be suitable for more general simulation purposes, and an example of a general job shop simulation is given.