Advanced Computing and e-Science

Grid computing is a technology that allows in principle an integration of resources transparent to the final user, using digital certificates to access distributed resources in the authorization framework of what is known as a virtual organization. 

The research line on “Advanced Computing and e-Science” at IFCA started around 2002 due to the requirements from different projects for support for simulation and data processing within large international collaborations, like CMS at LHC or ESA Planck mission. 

The necessity to further develop the Grid technology  motivated our initial research work in European projects like CrossGrid and DataGrid, where the first test-beds across whole Europe where setup. The participation of the group in the series of EGEE projects between 2004-2010 has assured a proper infrastructure support to our users.

We also extended our experience in Particle Physics and Astrophysics to new application domains: design of fusion reactor prototypes, modelling the flow in the atmosphere to understand pollution problems, simulation of the evolution of water resources, integration of remote instrumentation, or support to biodiversity and ecological models.

In the last years we have evolved towards Cloud computing. IFCA supports the FedCloud infrastructure, participates in the EGI-Engage and INDIGO-DataCloud H2020 projects. IFCA expertise includes support to IaaS based on OpenStack, and on PaaS tools.
 

The necessity for a stable framework regarding Grid infrastructures across Europe has led to the creation of the so called National Grid Initiatives. These are national level contact points with the mission of coordinating and promoting the usage of distributed computing infrastructures. The union of all the NGIs constitutes the European Grid Initiative, EGI.  

We at IFCA coordinate the activity of the Spanish National Grid Initiative, ES-NGI, and represent the spanish grid community in the framework of the European Grid Initiative EGI.

Our centre is hosting a node in the Spanish Supercomputing Network, coordinated by the BSC centre in Barcelona. This fact contributed to our general interest on advanced computing techniques, including the mechanisms for their integration. You can find more information about the activities related to supercomputing at IFCA here.

Our team has developed joint solutions in different fields like:

- the TRUFA pipeline in genomics in collaboration with the MNCN

- Complete modelling of a water reservoir usin DELFT 3D in collaboration with ECOHYDROS (SME)