Glimmerglass, a start-up based in Hayward, California, is working with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) on a new class of compute-intensive applications running on high-performance computers configured into grids that are interconnected with optical wavelengths. Glimmerglass is providing an optical switch with “Photonic Multicasting” capabilities. Glimmerglass said its technology enables “streaming computing” — the streaming of information, whether high-resolution imagery or massive databases, over the grid network. The concept is to dynamically offload large data-communications flows over optical networking test-beds. Separate, correlated operations can thus be simultaneously performed on each lambda-stream copy, such as a stereo rendering of image data. The Glimmerglass system can efficiently generate and transmit exact, synchronized copies of any lambda- stream without relying on higher layer protocols, such as TCP/IP or SONET. EVL and Glimmerglass will collaborate to integrate their proof-of-concept investigations into applications-centric network middleware.
The technology will be demonstrated at the SC 2003 conference to be held this month in Phoenix, Arizona.
http://www.glimmerglass.com
http://www.evl.uic.edu
