CASPer

Numerical simulation methods have improved and matured along the last forty years, and improved approaches have allowed for the simulation of more and more complex phenomenons. Alongside the evolution of the methods used, the growth of computing power has led to more and more precise simulations. It is now possible to accurately predict the behavior of a product in the early stages of its conception, thus shortening production cycles, as well as reducing the need for physical prototypes.

There are still two major reasons why numerical simulation is not fully adopted :

• Small and medium enterprises face a heavy entry cost to acquire the computational means (hardware, software licenses, and the personnel to manage them), and the return on investment on such infrastructure is usually very slow.
• On the other hand, bigger companies can not always fully exploit the simulation infrastructure they deployed. Once the computational means are in place they may not always be flexible enough for the people to fully exploit and share the results of the simulations. It is also hard to occasionally run more complex simulations than those the infrastructure is designed to scale for.

CASPer:

The consortium created around CASPer regroups:

• two research laboratories, IRISA and LRI, whose fields of excellence revolve around distributed computing and middleware for distributed computing
• an industrial research center, EADS CCR, which has developed both software related to distributed computing and numerical simulation
• two major industrial groups, EADS and ALCATEL, both willing to develop more interactive and user-friendly tools for their users to exploit numerical simulation results and to share their resources with outside partners.
• SMEs who want to share more easily and more interactively with their clients the results of simulations they run for them.

The software :

The aim of CASPer is to provide an open source ASP-like platform accessible through the internet and allowing users to :

• use remote ressources to launch a numerical simulation
• share the results within a community of users collaborating on the same project

The core of the job submission environment is currently able to submit jobs to a Globus or Unicore Grid, and should soon be able to submit jobs on an XtremWeb PC grid. The services provided by CASPer are made available through a web portal based on the Gridsphere portal. We're also planning to reuse as many as possible of the gridportlets as soon as they're released.

You can download files here :

Package	Info	Date	Download
casperlabs_05_09_19.tar.gz	The last version of the entire CASPer Project	September 19, 2005
cmt_Linux_05_09_19.tar.gz	CASPer Monitoring Tool : the linux tool to manage jobs results and files	September 19, 2005
cmt_Windows_05_09_19.zip	CASPer Monitoring Tool : the windows tool to manage jobs results and files	September 19, 2005
DRMAA for Torque	A DRMAA interface for Torque (tested with 1.2.0p5) may work with OpenPBS	February 9, 2006	Download

ST_MULT_INIT	OK
ST_MULT_EXIT	OK
ST_SUPPORTED_ATTR	OK
ST_SUPPORTED_VATTR	OK
ST_VERSION	OK
ST_DRM_SYSTEM	OK
ST_DRMAA_IMPL	OK
ST_CONTACT	OK
ST_EMPTY_SESSION_WAIT	OK
ST_EMPTY_SESSION_SYNCHRONIZE_DISPOSE	OK
ST_EMPTY_SESSION_SYNCHRONIZE_NODISPOSE	OK
ST_EMPTY_SESSION_CONTROL	OK
ST_SUBMIT_WAIT	OK
ST_BULK_SUBMIT_WAIT	OK
ST_BULK_SINGLESUBMIT_WAIT_INDIVIDUAL	OK
ST_SUBMITMIXTURE_SYNC_ALL_DISPOSE	OK
ST_SUBMITMIXTURE_SYNC_ALL_NODISPOSE	OK
ST_SUBMITMIXTURE_SYNC_ALLIDS_DISPOSE	OK
ST_SUBMITMIXTURE_SYNC_ALLIDS_NODISPOSE	OK
ST_EXIT_STATUS	Failed
ST_SUBMIT_KILL_SIG	Failed
ST_INPUT_FILE_FAILURE	Failed
ST_OUTPUT_FILE_FAILURE	Failed
ST_ERROR_FILE_FAILURE	Failed
ST_SUBMIT_IN_HOLD_RELEASE	OK
ST_SUBMIT_IN_HOLD_DELETE	OK
ST_BULK_SUBMIT_IN_HOLD_SESSION_RELEASE	OK
ST_BULK_SUBMIT_IN_HOLD_SINGLE_RELEASE	OK
ST_BULK_SUBMIT_IN_HOLD_SESSION_DELETE	Failed
ST_BULK_SUBMIT_IN_HOLD_SINGLE_DELETE	Failed
ST_SUBMIT_POLLING_WAIT_TIMEOUT	OK
ST_SUBMIT_POLLING_WAIT_ZEROTIMEOUT	OK
ST_SUBMIT_POLLING_SYNCHRONIZE_TIMEOUT	OK
ST_SUBMIT_POLLING_SYNCHRONIZE_ZEROTIMEOUT	OK
ST_ATTRIBUTE_CHANGE	OK
ST_SUBMIT_SUSPEND_RESUME_WAIT	OK
ST_USAGE_CHECK	-
ST_UNSUPPORTED_ATTR	OK
ST_UNSUPPORTED_VATTR	OK
MT_SUBMIT_WAIT	-
MT_SUBMIT_BEFORE_INIT_WAIT	-
MT_EXIT_DURING_SUBMIT	-
MT_SUBMIT_MT_WAIT	-
MT_EXIT_DURING_SUBMIT_OR_WAIT	-