Research Platforms
Global Research Platform (GRP)
iCAIR is a founding member of the Global Research Platform (GRP) initiative, an international scientific collaboration established to create innovative advanced services that integrate worldwide resources at speeds of gigabits and terabits per second, especially for data-intensive science research. GRP focuses on design, implementation, and operation strategies for next-generation distributed services and infrastructure to facilitate high-performance data gathering, analytics, transport, computing, and storage among multiple science sites at 100 Gbps or higher (400 Gbps-1.2 Tbps).
The GRP functions as a prototype services platform and a testbed for experimental research. GRP community partners in North America (e.g., for example, interconnected with the US National Research Platform - NRP), Asia (e.g., interconnected with the Asia Pacific Research Platform – APRP), Europe, and South America are researching and developing new services architecture and technology to support optimal data-intensive scientific workflows.
The GRP is a worldwide Science DMZ, a distributed environment for data-intensive research. The GRP leverages optical circuits and open exchange facilities provided by its collaborators, including the 100 Gbps Global Research Platform Network (GRPnet that provides services between the Pacific Wave at the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP in Seattle, with extensions to Sunnyvale and Los Angeles, California) and the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility.
Asia Pacific Research Platform (APRP)
iCAIR and the StarLight Consortium participate in the Asia Pacific Research Platform (APRP), developed under the auspices of the Asia Pacific Advanced Networking (APAN) consortium. The APRP initiative is closely related to the Korean Research Platform (KRP) and Australian Research Platform (ARP) initiatives.
National Research Platform (NRP)
iCAIR is a participant in the National Research Platform (NRP) initiative that was established to provide academic researchers with a simple data-sharing architecture supporting end-to-end 10-to-100 Gbps performance to enable virtual co-location of large amounts of data with computing. E2E services (high-bandwidth disk-to-disk) performance is complex and challenging because the networks interconnect multiple sites and traverse multiple network management domains: campus, regional, national, and international.
The NRP initiative supports addressing these issues by innovative techniques for scaling end-to-end data sharing. The NRP also provides segmented resources for large-scale testbed experimentation in isolated environments. iCAIR also participated in the earlier Pacific Research Platform initiative. iCAIR is also collaborating to integrate the NRP into the GRP.