Introduction
Project title: Domain-oriented services and resources of Polish Infrastructure for Supporting Computational Science in the European Research Space – PLGrid Plus
Project duration: 1.10.2011 – 31.05.2015
Contract number: POIG.02.03.00-00-096/10
Total budget of the Project: 81 436 209,00 PLN
EC contribution: 67 990 621,10 PLN
Beneficiary: Academic Computer Centre Cyfronet AGH.
The project was funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the Innovative Economy Program and was being carried out by the PL-Grid (Polish NGI) Consortium, coordinated by the ACC Cyfronet AGH.
PLGrid Plus project served Polish scientific communities enabling extensive cooperation among them, as well as international cooperation in the scope of research activities in the area of e-Science.
The e-infrastructure requirements of the scientific community working on Big Science problems are highly diversified and depend on the scientific field. To harmoniously support, in terms of IT, both, the development of scientific research in the various problem areas and researchers, it is necessary to fit the characteristics of the IT infrastructure to problems being the subject of research. Preparation of specific computing environments – so called domain grids – i.e., solutions, services and extended infrastructure (including software), tailored to the needs of different groups of scientists, was the most important task implemented within the 3-year PLGrid Plus project.
The new services, developed within PLGrid Plus, provided a significant extension of the Polish computing infrastructure, which had been built since 2008 within the PL-Grid project. Scientists could use computing resources including more than 230 TFlops of computing power and more than 3.6 PBytes of storage space. Within the Project it was planned to extend these resources three times.
Domain-specific solutions were created for 13 groups of users, representing the strategic areas and important topics for the Polish and international science: AstroGrid-PL, HEPGrid, Nanotechnologies, Acoustics, Life Science, Quantum Chemistry and Molecular Physics, Ecology, SynchroGrid, Energy Sector, Bioinformatics, Health Sciences, Materials, and Metallurgy.
Subsequently, launching support and adaptation services, as well as training for other user groups were realised within the Project.
In September 2014, the book titled: "eScience on Distributed Computing Infrastructure", has been published in the Springer Publisher in the series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 8500. The book describes the experience gained by the PLGrid Plus project partners and the results of scientific work carried out during this project. The publication contains 36 articles accompanied by the subject index and a useful glossary of terms. More info about the book is available at the Springer website.
