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Overview
Many business and industry users have computationally demanding applications
they would like to run on a cluster or grid, for example complex
simulations. Until now the complexity of grid and cluster systems, and their
associated programming, has deterred many users. Active Sheets makes Grid
and Cluster computing accessible to ordinary users.
Active Sheets (AS) enables an ordinary spreadsheet to schedule and drive
clusters and grids, and to do so without requiring any programming or
complex configuration. All that is required is a spreadsheet. AS
automatically schedules computation between the spreadsheet and Cluster or
Grid e.g. NetSolve.
AS is an Excel add-in which enables concurrent evaluation of formulae on a
cluster or grid. The basis for this is a mechanism to make the usual Excel
evaluation mechanism asynchronous. AS is written using .NET and Office
automation.
The architecture supports a database for caching results and communications
adapters for NetSolve, web services, G2 and Nimrod.
Active Sheets may be downloaded from here:
http://www.plas.fit.qut.edu.au/Wiki/Projects/ActiveSheets/Public.html
For further information please contact Paul Roe p.roe@qut.edu.au
This is a joint project between Monash University, University of Tennessee,
Knoxville and the DSTC.
We would like to thank Microsoft Research Redmond who has sponsored this
project.
Research team
Researchers
Professor David Abramson (Monash University)
Associate Professor Paul Roe
Research Assistant
Gavin Cheuk
Publications
David Abramson, Jack Dongarra, Eric Meek, Paul Roe, Zhiao Shi, Simplified
Grid Computing through Spreadsheets and NetSolve, in Proc of HPC Asia 2004.
IEEE Press
ActiveSheets: Super-Computing with Spreadsheets, David Abramson, Paul Roe,
Lew Kotler, and Dinelli Mather. HPC 2001, Special Track on Simulation
Environments
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