R&D Project Report Overview of Japanese science Grid project NAREGI

This paper outlines the National Research Grid Initiative (NAREGI), which started as a fiveyear project from fiscal 2003 as one of the major Japanese national IT projects currently being conducted. Collaboration among industry, academia, and the government will play a key role in its success. The Center for Grid Research and Development has been established at the National Institute of Informatics as a center for R&D of high-performance, scalable Grid middleware technologies, which are aimed at enabling major computing centers to host grids over high-speed networks to provide a future computational infrastructure for scientific and engineering research. As an example of utilizing such Grid computing technologies, th eC omputational Nanoscience Center at the Institute for Molecular Science is conducting research on leading-edge, grid-enabled nano-science and nanotechnology simulation applications, which will lead to the discovery and development of new materials and next-generation nano-devices. The NAREGI Grid middleware is expected to be utilized as one of the software layers in the Cyber Science Infrastructure (CSI) framework which has been newly initiated at the National Institute of Informatics. Starting April 2006, this project will be integrated into the new, seven-year “Development andApplicationofAdvancedHigh-performanceSupercomputer”project, in ordertoprovide theGrid middleware for the peta-scalecomputing era, in addition to the current research and development efforts toward CSI.