Grimshaw, Andrew
Primary Appointment
Associate Professor, Computer Science
Contact Information
Rice Hall, Room 502
Telephone: (434) 982-2204
Fax: (434) 982-2214
Email: grimshaw@virginia.edu
Website: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/brochure/profs/grimshaw.html
Research Interests
Grid computing, high-performance parallel computing, compilers for parallel systems, operating systems
Research Description
Grimshaw anticipated that gigabit networks will make possible the realization of very large nationwide virtual computers comprised of a variety of geographically distributed high-performance machines and workstations. To realize the potential of the physical infrastructure , software must be developed that is easy to use , supports large degrees of parallelism in applications code , and manages the complexity of the underlying physical system for the user. Grimshaw's early research projects include Mentat and ELFS. Mentat was an early object-oriented parallel processing system designed to simplify the task of writing parallel programs. ELFS (Extensible File Systems) addresses the I/O crisis brought on by parallel computers. These projects laid the foundation for the creation of Legion , a collaborative project to realize the potential of the NII by constructing a very large virtual computer that spans the globe. Legion addresses issues such as parallelism , fault-tolerance , security , autonomy , heterogeneity , resource management , and access transparency in a multi-language environment. The Legion project helped set the standards for current Grid Computing research , and has also formed the technological basis of Avaki Corporation (now merged with Sybase)