MTA SZTAKI Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems

The Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems (LPDS), as a department of MTA SZTAKI, is a research laboratory in distributed grid and cloud technologies. LPDS is a founding member of the Hungarian Grid Competence Centre, the Hungarian National Grid Initiative, and the Hungarian OpenNebula Community, and also coordinates several European grid/cloud projects.

LPDS laboratory, in cooperation with other departments of MTA SZTAKI, was involved in the development of the SZTAKI Cloud and takes part in many cloud-based projects. The LPDS cloud research is focusing on the field of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)-based cloud systems to make the previously evolved products and services of LPDS available for cloud-based execution in a scalable and transparent way.

Main research areas

 * Cloud systems
 * Scientific gateways for grid and cloud systems
 * Workflow-based IT
 * Grid computing, especially Desktop Grids
 * Interoperability between cloud and grid systems
 * Resource brokering in cloud systems

Products
gUSE (grid and cloud user support environment) is an open source science gateway framework that enables users access to grid and cloud infrastructures. It has been developed to support a large variety of user communities. It provides a general-purpose, workflow-oriented graphical user interface to create and run workflows on various Distributed Computing Infrastructures including clusters, grids, desktop grids, and clouds. The gUSE framework can be used by National Grid Initiatives (NGIs) to support small user communities that cannot afford to develop their own customized science gateway.

P-GRADE Portal is a Liferay technology-based web portal of gUSE. It can be accessed via major modern web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc. It supports the development and submission of distributed applications executed on the computational resources of various distributed computing infrastructures (DCIs) including clusters, service grids, desktop grids, and clouds.

Research
LPDS has participated in national and international grid and cloud research projects since 2000, with notable results in the area of grid/cloud resources and in the development of high-level user interfaces. In this field, an important result is the WS-PGRADE/gUSE (used in several European grid), made for accessing grid and cloud systems through a portal in a convenient and user-friendly way.

Additionally, LPDS participates in Big data management and storage within the field of agricultural research.



Training
LPDS has played an active role in providing grid and cloud training in Europe and worldwide. Through national and international training, the Laboratory provides knowledge transfer and targets new users from the industry as well as from science. LPDS organized and hosted summer schools and training on the grid- and cloud-related topics since 2005.

Personnel
The Head of the LPDS is Prof. Dr. Péter Kacsuk. The Deputy Head of the LPDS is Dr. Robert Lovas. 1 DSc, 10 PhDs, and over 20 full or part-time members work in the laboratory.