New Dutch HPCN projects approved

Amersfoort 11 Mar 99 In The Netherlands, the Foundation HPCN funds projects and activities which have an industrial focus with money that stems from the Minstery of Economic affairs. Also it administers the Dutch TTN. Late 1998, the Foundation has issued a tender to disseminate the results of HPCN technology projects, especially into new industrial application areas. Out of the 26 submitted, nine dissemination projects were approved. They each get a maximum of 200.000 euro additional funding. The Foundation HPCN has also financially supported SURFnet's participation in the TEN-155 European high-bandwidth network project Quantum.

The approved dissemination projects cover a wide range of applications, including stock analysis, medical applications and systems. Partners are universities, research institutes, industry and government agencies. We will describe a few examples of the projects.

ASAP: Automatic Stock Price Analysis and Prediction
ASAP will develop an integrated HPCN software package for financial "leader-follower" models for the stock markets. There will be computational models of the AEX and ING stock, and a daily estimate of the AEX that will be available online. Technology used includes traditional numerical simulation and genetic algorithms.

Virtual Reality on Demand
Virtual Reality on Demand will bring VR into the living room. Powered by supercomputers applications will use cable or ADSL network connection to feed WebTV clients. In one application the system will be used to show to the citizen how his environment could be changed when building plans would be executed. It can also be used to show how a new city quarter will look, which helps to decide whether you want to buy a new house there.

Conquer: interactive data mining
Data mining, a technique to explore large sets of data, can benefit from parallel database technology. By implementing in the project a multi-query optimised will be built into an existing data mining product. When this is used on an HPCN platform, interactive datamining is possible. The resulting product can be used in all kinds of applications and will be used world wide.

HPCN technology for Virtual Megastore
Advanced shopping techniques for the Internet will be developed for users that have a high-bandwidth available. More specifically, a shop that delivers music on CD will be installed. A procedure called on-line CD burning could be applied. HPCN technology provides the necessary computing power behind the system.

Virtual Radiology Explorer
Within this project communication software will be developed that allows users in the hospital to send and receive data from HPC systems. Also a parallel HPC 3D image software package will be developed based on an Arcobel designed image processor.

 

Ad Emmen