An OBS-based Grid Architecture

Grids offer a uniform interface to a distributed collection of heterogeneous computational, storage and network resources. Most current operational Grids are dedicated to a limited set of computationally and/or data intensive scientific problems. The de facto modus operandi is one where users submit job requests to a Grid Portal, acting as an interface to the Grid's management system, which in turn negotiates with `dumb' resources (computing and storage elements, network links) and arranges for the jobs to be executed. In this paper, we present a new Grid architecture featuring generic application support, direct user access (Grid-to-the-home) and decentralized scheduling intelligence in the network. We show how Optical Burst Switching (OBS) enables these features while offering the necessary network flexibility demanded by future Grid applications