Globus Wins Best Integrated Software Experience Award

Newswise — Singapore, March 3, 2022 - Globus received the Best Integrated Software Experience award at the annual Data Mover Challenge (DMC), a key event at the SupercomputingAsia (SCA) conference. This competition brings together experts from industry and academia to challenge international teams to come up with the most innovative solutions for transferring huge amounts of data across servers around the world that are connected by 100Gbps international research and education networks.

DMC21 provided a one-of-a-kind global infrastructure consisting of data transfer nodes (DTNs) with diverse capabilities, and network connections with widely varying characteristics. This allowed the Globus team to showcase both the robustness and the performance that Globus delivers. Globus achieved rates of over 65 Gbps on a network link with a round-trip time (latency) of over 300ms.

Dr. Ian Foster, Globus co-inventor and director of Argonne’s Data Science and Learning Division, states “I am honored that Globus was selected among this group of competitors. In today’s world the ability to rapidly and easily transfer large amounts of data—and to share it with partners and collaborators—is essential to progress in any research and business endeavor.”

The challenge, which ran from August 1 to October 31, 2021, was open to all organizations, institutions, researchers, and students. Teams were asked to set up their software, transfer data, and demonstrate to the panel of judges that their software ran the best on DTNs that are set up within existing international networks. The winning team’s leader was invited to participate in an award presentation and solution showcase at SCA22.

Participants were assessed and selected by an international panel of judges composed of domain experts and professionals in the field of networking and data transfer. The challenge focused on optimizing point-to-point data transfer between sites. While each team utilized a unique approach, the Globus team—led by Rajkumar Kettimuthu and Zhengchun Liu, with support from Mike Link and Jack Kordas—highlighted efficient use of the network. In particular, Globus utilized client-side striping, a recently added capability in Globus that improves the throughput of transfers of small numbers of large files. The DMC21 infrastructure also allowed Globus to test experimental features such as IPv6 support, which will be added to service in the future.

For more information on Globus file transfer, please visit www.globus.org/file-transfer. For more information on DMC21, the participants and the supporting partners, please visit www.nscc.sg/data-mover-challenge-2021.

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About Globus

Globus is a platform for research data management, used by leading non-profit and commercial research organizations, national laboratories, and government facilities worldwide. Operated by the University of Chicago, the Globus service enables secure, reliable file transfer, sharing, and data management automation throughout the research lifecycle. The service is integrated into data portals, science gateways, and other web applications that manage data distribution from instruments and provide access to reference datasets. Globus is supported by subscribers and funding from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Sloan Foundation. Visit globus.org.