Funding, Grants & Awards | News
Cloud Research Consortium Receives $10 Million Grant
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has
awarded a $10 million grant to a national consortium for cloud computing
research and development.
According to NSF, the grant will support the design, deployment and initial
operation of Chameleon, which is a
large-scale, reconfigurable experimental environment for cloud research. The
Chameleon testbed will be co-located at the
University of Chicago and the University of
Texas at Austin. Other consortium members include
Ohio State University with expertise in high
performance interconnects, Northwestern
University with expertise in networking and the
University of Texas at San Antonio with expertise in outreach.
Chameleon will consist of 28,000 processor cores in 650 multi-core cloud
nodes with five petabytes of storage. Unlike many other testbeds, Chameleon will
be able to support heterogeneous computer architectures, "including low-power
processors, general processing units (GPUs) and field-programmable gate arrays
(FPGAs), as well as a variety of network interconnects and storage devices,"
according to information from the NSF. This flexibility will enable researchers
to test a variety of hardware, software and networking components.
According to the NSF and Northwestern University, industry has been the
driving force behind much of the recent design of cloud-computing architecture,
and the lack of a large-scale experimental research platform has been a barrier to
advancement of cloud services and technologies. However, Chameleon will
complement the industry's efforts while enabling academic researchers "to
experiment and advance cloud computing architectures that can support a new
generation of innovative applications, including real-time and safety-critical
applications like those used in medical devices, power grids and transportation
systems," according to information from the NSF.
Further information about the Chameleon cloud research environment can be
found on the Chameleon site.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].
