“International Symposium on Grid Computing 2004 (ISGC 2004): Making the World Wide Grid (WWG) a Reality” will be held in Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan from 26 to 28 July, 2004. The Symposium is co-organized by Institute of Physics, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, and Computing Centre of Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC).
The concept of Grid Computing is to share geographical dispersed computing power, storage capacities, and many other resources. In the last few years, it has gained a prominent attention in academic and research communities. Due to the deluge of the data and computational needs, those fields, such as High Energy Physics, Bio-Informatics, and Digital Archive, demand a great deal of computational and storage capacity. The development of Grid Computing makes the on-demand allocation and management of integrated computing resources possible.
Today, many Grid systems have been developed for various applications and user communities. By far the largest scale project is called LCG (LHC Computing Grid) which is led by the CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics). The second phase of the project, LCG-2, has been launched in 8 core sites including Taiwan from January 2004. The establishment and operation of LCG-2 will have a profound effect on the way our world uses information technology, much as the World Wide Web did. This is a major milestone in the development of the new Grid technology which will bring large benefits to all fields of sciences. Based on the experience of LCG, Grid technology will extend to fields like Bio-informatics, Digital Archive, Biodiversity Informatics, and pave a solid platform for future research needs.
The goal of ISGC is to offer an opportunity to the community in the Asia Pacific region to have a better understanding of the vision and progress of the Grid technology and Grid operation in the world. The ISGC will cover topics such as applications on High Energy Physics, Bioinformatics, Healthgrid, LCG, e-Science, Semantic Grid, Data Grid, Grid Operation, Grid services, and Grid technology. The structure of Symposium includes invited talks and regional report sessions. It provides a forum for the potential developers, users in Asia Pacific to meet, to share, and to learn from each other. By exchanging their experiences on how to develop Grid technology and application, this Symposium would provide the Grid community with invaluable insights for future collaboration.