[Swarm-Support] Proposal: Parallel Parameter Sweeps on Grids

[Ed Baskerville]

Hello Swarmers,

There has been talk before on this list about harnessing a network-- 
yes, a grid--of machines to do ABM parameter sweeps in parallel. (I  
even built something for Apple's Xgrid a couple years back, only to  
have them change the API just as I got distracted by other things.)  
After some discussions with Rick Riolo, I'm trying to get going on a  
general system for integrating ABM parameter sweeps with modern grid  
systems--not just Xgrid, but Sun Grid Engine, etc.

This effort is only going to get off the ground if I can pay my rent  
at the same time, so I'm planning to submit a proposal to Google as  
part of their Summer of Code, wherein they fund current or (as in my  
case) returning students to work on open-source software projects.

In order to put together the best proposal I can, and in order to  
jumpstart community involvement, I've posted a draft outline on my  
new software development blog in the hopes of getting feedback from  
you all:

http://code.edbaskerville.com/2006/04/25/gridsweeper-proposal/

If you have any thoughts about this project, please leave them in the  
comments section on the blog post. I hope this will be useful to a  
lot of people.

Thanks in advance,
Ed