by Jonas Bardino for EuroPython 2011
Grid computing was all the buzz in the beginning of the millennium and still has serious attention in different forms although many of the original grand promises were never delivered. The general level of ambitions have instead slowly but steadily degraded to those of the latest buzz word, Cloud.
We as a project have proven that most of the original promises can actually be delivered and we have done so using Python almost solely as the implementation language. The choice of Python provided us with a stable and versatile base for quickly getting this far and it significantly eases extending and maintaining our middleware in the future. MiG is currently about 50000 lines of source code but it still offers more features than competing grid systems with millions of lines of code.
Apart from introducing the open source MiG middleware and summarizing how we got here, this talk will outline some of the core technologies used to reach that goal and underline why it can make a lot of sense to choose Python for complex HPC projects like MiG, too. Talk keywords include Network Programming, Open Source Python projects, Science and Math and Web-based Systems. There’s no special intended audience, but a certain level of Python knowledge and experience may be an advantage. Please refer to http://code.google.com/p/migrid/ for further MiG information.
