Within the scope of a semester project a Desktop Grid evaluation was made for the Thomson Development Labs VOS (Villingen Optical Storage). Scope was the evaluation and implementation of a Windows desktop grid to support the extensive calculation of holographic data storage simulations.
A desktop grid can be used to combine the computing power of separate desktop computers to form a powerful, high throughput computing platform. Only three different systems fulfilled the requirements: BOINC, Condor and GridGain. The closer evaluation showed that the Condor project implements the best features (MPI, SOAP, Workflows), provides a fast splitting of computing tasks and is very easy to use. A productive system was installed at the Thomson Labs with more than 25 worker nodes.
A second Condor system is running at the Furtwangen University PC Labs with over 100 worker nodes.
