14 DAY TRIAL // Besides Hadoop, an open source distributed file system and parallel execution environment that enables its users to process massive amounts of data, whose main contributor Yahoo! has already been so far, the Sunnyvale, California based company announced today that it will be "the first in the industry to launch an open source program aimed at advancing the research and development of systems software for distributed computing."
The program is set on leveraging its leadership in Hadoop, a sub-project of the Apache Software Foundation, to enable researchers to modify and evaluate the systems software running on a 4000 processor supercomputer provided by Yahoo!. An interesting move, because instead of providing users with computers for running applications and coursework like the rest of the supercomputing centers, Yahoo!'s program focuses on pushing the boundaries of large scale systems software research.
Dennis Roy of Yahoo! Inc. stated that "Yahoo! intends to make Hadoop available in a supercomputing-class data center to the academic community for systems software research. Called the M45, Yahoo!'s supercomputing cluster, named after one of the best known open star clusters, has approximately 4,000 processors, three terabytes of memory, 1.5 petabytes of disks, and a peak performance of more than 27 trillion calculations per second (27 teraflops), placing it among the top 50 fastest supercomputers in the world.
M45 is expected to run the latest version of Hadoop and other state-of-the-art, Yahoo!-supported, open-source distributed computing software such as the Pig parallel programming language developed by Yahoo! Research, the central advanced research organization of Yahoo! Inc."
"Yahoo! is dedicated to working with leading universities to solve some of the most critical computing challenges facing our industry," said Ron Brachman, vice president and head of Yahoo! academic relations. "Launching this program and M45 is a significant milestone in creating a global, collaborative research community working to advance the new sciences of the Internet. This milestone is a key element of Yahoo!'s growing Academic Relations effort."