Finnish researchers can utilize the grid infrastructures in many different ways:

1) The researcher has access to European databases

For example, in the EU-funded bioinformatics collaboration project EMBRACE the major bioinformatics databases and software are integrated through various grid technologies to make it possible to automate database queries and results analyses as straightforwardly and as much as possible. Thus, the researcher has more time for the actual analysis, not needing to concentrate to the technical details relating to the use of databases and computing servers.

2) The researcher can use the geographically distributed computing resources

The researcher can gain resources for his projects from, for example, the EGEE infrastructure, a computing grid spread over 32 different countries and more than 90 institutions. A job sent to the EGEE infrastructure can be divided into many parts and computed by several, relatively small-capacity computers. Hence, within a short time, the researcher can be supported with a considerable amount of computing resources.

”Grand challenge” projects that require a substantial amount of parallel computing capacity are computationally so demanding that they cannot be executed with national resources without neglecting other users. The DEISA infrastructure, integrating the national HPC infrastructures, makes it possible to release an entire supercomputer for a while for one single project, because the jobs of other users can simultaneously be transferred to be run by other European centers.

3) The researcher can use grid-based observation and measuring instruments, data storages and materials and various services related to them (analysis, visualization, etc.).

Large and multinational research centers, like the LHC particle accelerators of CERN and large optical telescopes of ESO (European Southern Observatory), produce enormous amounts of measurement data, and the researchers who use the data are dispersed around the world. Grid technologies bring the measuring data within the reach of all researchers who need it, and it can be analyzed, for example, through the computer resources connected to the computing grids.

4) Grid enhances joint research for international research groups

A grid makes it possible and easy for researchers located even in different countries to share common data resources, such as experimental data or simulation results. For example, the home and project directories of a DEISA user appear in the same form in every DEISA center, and a researcher in Finland has access to the same data as his German colleague through the DEISA centers in Germany.

Additional information

• Grid Café - CERN’s website on the grid in layman’s language