Aci-GRID-TLSE

The French partners of the project are research laboratories : CERFACS, IRIT, LaBRI, and LIP-ENS, and industrial partners : CNES, CEA, EADS, EDF and IFP.

There has been much joint work over many years on sparse matrix software between CERFACS, ENSEEIHT-IRIT, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, LaBRI, LIP-ENSL, Parallab, University of Florida, Berkeley, and other collaborators. This has given rise to the production of several software packages that are available to the scientific community.

The goal of the Project is to design an expert site that uses the accumulated expertise just mentioned and provides a one-stop shop for potential users of sparse codes. The user may want to interrogate our databases for information or references on sparse matrix work or may want actual statistics from runs of sparse software on his or her problem. The site will provide an easy access to the tools and will allow comparative analysis of these packages on a user-submitted problem or on particular matrices in the matrix collection also available on the site.

The developments and the researches involved in the project are at three levels :

Design of an efficient infrastructure for computations over a grid :
We use the tools developed within the framework of the GRID-ASP project by LIP-ReMaP -- partner of the project --, LORIA-Résédas, and LIFC-SRDP with an additional high-level administrator interface for the definition, the deployment, and the exploitation of services over a grid (Weaver module).

Design of a Web interface for computation over a grid :
This interface -- called Websolve -- allows a standard navigator to submit computational requests to a grid by using third-party software such as the MATLAB computational environment, OCTAVE, Scilab, Scilab//, Netsolve, DIET, ...

The main developments for the expert site consist of :
Writing the procedures for the expertise, inclusion of the sparse matrix software, building a database including a bibliography on sparse matrix software and collections of sparse matrices (Rutherford-Boeing and PARASOL data sets).

Local contact : Christophe Hamerling (hamerling@cerfacs.fr)