The Legion support for advanced parameter-space studies on a grid
Parameter-space (p-space) studies involve running a single application several times with different parameter sets. Since the jobs are mutually independent, many computing resources can be recruited to conduct an entire study in a distributed manner. The p-space studies are attractive applications for grids, which are networked collections of computing and other resources. Legion is a grid infrastructure that facilitates the secure and easy use of heterogeneous, geographically distributed resources by providing the illusion of a single virtual machine from those resources. Legion provides tools and services that support advanced p-space studies, i.e., studies that make complex demands such as transparent access to distributed files, fault-tolerance and security. We demonstrate these benefits with a protein-folding experiment in which a molecular simulation package was run over a grid managed by Legion.
legion parameter-space grid