By Bernama
Kuala Lumpur : MIMOS Berhad, a strategic agency under Malaysia’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, has launched KnowledgeGRID Malaysia as the country’s next knowledge infrastructure to increase Malaysia’s competitiveness in technology advancements regionally and globally.
KnowledgeGRID Malaysia is a system where computing resources are shared across networks and enables selection, aggregation and sharing of information resources in multiple administrative domain and geographical areas.
Among other things, the grid will provide computing resources and data capabilities to the nation’s weather modelling, earthquake-simulation and protein folding, DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) and drug design research.
This will accelerate Malaysia’s advancement in biotechnology, forecasting of natural disasters and animation content initiatives at significantly lower costs.
Mimos senior manager for Grid Computing Lab Ng Kwang Ming says KnowledgeGRID is essentially Malaysia’s K-Infrastructure that consists of hardware, software and services that provide ordinary people access to unprecedented computing power, services and data.
He told Bernama in an interview that KnowledgeGRID will be the knowledge collaboration platform that brings super computing power to everyone, including academic institutions, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), government and the private sector.
KnowledgeGRID Malaysia is a Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation (MOSTI) initiative under the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010) and was launched by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last August.
“KnowledgeGRID Malaysia is the catalyst for a knowledge nation and plays a pivotal role in ensuring that Malaysia takes the technological leap to the next ICT (information & communication technology) evolution,” he explained.
Recently, Ng said, Mimos signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Oracle Corporation Malaysia Sendirian Berhad, the local unit of United States software firm Oracle, to jointly develop and deploy a sensor grid pilot project for the agriculture sector under cKnowledgeGRID Malaysia.
He said the project will take agriculture to an advanced level in line with the vision of the Ninth Malaysia Plan. The proposed agriculture grid project will see the integration of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database technologies with Mimos-developed precision sensors to develop preventive and proactive solutions for the agricultural sector.
Besides agriculture, Ng said, Mimos is also working with animation industry players to undertake the rendering process. “By connecting through KnowledgeGRID Malaysia, they can use the super computer power to do the rendering with quicker results,” he added.
Ng said Mimos is also looking to link up all the national economic corridors being set up in the country with KnowledgeGRID Malaysia.