Improved Computational Intelligence through High Performance Distributed Computing

Abstract

Modern computational and business intelligence techniques are increasingly used for product design and complex decision making. However, as the problems they solve become more difficult, the need for high performance computing becomes increasingly important. Modern Cloud and Grid platforms provide an ideal base for supporting this work, but typically lack software support. Over the past 20 years we have developed a computational framework, called Nimrod that allows users to pose complex questions underpinned by simulation technologies. Nimrod allows users to perform what-if analysis across an enormous number of options. Nimrod also supports experimental design techniques and provides automatic optimisation algorithms (e.g. genetic algorithms) that search through design options. Nimrod has been used globally to across a wide range of application in science, environmental modelling, engineering and business.

In this talk I will describe the Nimrod framework, and show examples of how it has supported a range of scientific and engineering questions. I will show how Clouds and Grids support these case studies, and outline our continued research in the area.