Gridware
| Company type | Software |
|---|---|
| Industry | High-performance computing, Grid computing |
| Predecessor | Gridware |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California , United States |
| Products | Grid Engine (Oracle Grid Engine, Sun Grid Engine, Univa Grid Engine, Open Cluster Scheduler) |
| Owner | Altair Engineering (via Univa) |
Oracle Grid Engine, previously known as Sun Grid Engine (SGE), CODINE (an acronym for Computing in Distributed Networked Environments), or GRD (Global Resource Director), serves as a batch-queuing system designed for grid computing to efficiently manage clusters of computers. Initially obtained through the acquisition of Gridware, this technology was developed and maintained by Sun Microsystems before transitioning to Oracle Corporation. Various open source and commercial derivatives have since been produced by entities such as Sun, Oracle, Univa Corporation, and HPC Gridware under the name Gridware Cluster Scheduler. The open source variant persists under the Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) as the Open Cluster Scheduler.
On October 22, 2013, Univa secured ownership of the intellectual property rights and trademarks associated with Grid Engine technology, establishing itself as the exclusive commercial distributor and continuing its support. Univa significantly enhanced the platform’s scalability, exemplified by operating a cluster with one million cores on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2018.
Although the original open-source project website was discontinued in 2010, versions remain accessible under the SISSL license. These have been branched into multiple projects such as Son of Grid Engine, Open Grid Scheduler, Univa Grid Engine, Open Cluster Scheduler, and Gridware Cluster Scheduler.
Grid Engine’s primary application lies within high-performance computing (HPC) clusters where it manages the submission, scheduling, dispatching, and execution of extensive quantities of standalone, parallel, or interactive jobs across remote systems. Additionally, it administers distributed resources including CPU cores, memory capacity, storage space, and software licenses.
The system formed the backbone of Sun Grid’s utility computing platform launched in 2006 within the United States and subsequently expanded globally. This early cloud computing service preceded later offerings like Amazon Web Services.
History
In 2000, Sun Microsystems acquired Gridware, a commercial provider specializing in advanced computing resource management software with offices located in San Jose, California, and Regensburg, Germany. Later that year, Sun introduced a free edition of Gridware compatible with Solaris and Linux operating systems, rebranding it as Sun Grid Engine.
By 2001, Sun had released the source code under an open source development framework. Ports for Mac OS X and various *BSD systems were contributed by developers outside of Sun.
Following Oracle’s acquisition of Sun in 2010, updates to Grid Engine version 6.2 update 6 no longer included source code alongside binaries, and modifications ceased being committed to public repositories. This led to the community initiating the Open Grid Scheduler project to preserve a freely available implementation of Grid Engine.
On January 18, 2011, Univa announced it had hired several leading engineers from the former Sun Grid Engine team to create its own fork named Univa Grid Engine. This version offered commercial support and competed directly with Oracle’s iteration.
Univa acquired all intellectual property rights and trademarks related to Grid Engine technology on October 22, 2013, assuming responsibility for supporting Oracle’s existing customers.
In September 2020, Altair Engineering—a global technology firm focused on data analytics, product design, and high-performance computing—completed its acquisition of Univa.
By 2023, principal developers from Sun Grid Engine, Oracle Grid Engine, Univa Grid Engine, and their successors began development on Gridware Cluster Scheduler (GCS), built upon the open source Open Cluster Scheduler while maintaining full backward compatibility with "SGE".
Cluster architecture
A standard Grid Engine cluster consists of a primary master host accompanied by several execution hosts. Configurable shadow masters function as hot spare units, ready to take over management responsibilities if the main master host encounters a failure.
Support and training
Commercial support and training services for Univa Grid Engine and Oracle Grid Engine are offered by Univa. In earlier periods, Sun provided support agreements for the commercial edition of Grid Engine across a wide range of UNIX systems as well as Windows. These professional offerings, including consulting, training sessions, and support, were delivered through Sun Partners, with partnerships such as those with Georgetown University for administration courses. Furthermore, The Bioteam organized brief 1- or 2-day training workshops focused on SGE.
The community could access assistance through Grid Engine mailing lists. Additionally, Grid Engine Workshops were conducted in the years 2002, 2003, 2007, 2009, and 2012 in Regensburg, Germany.
Other Grid Engine based products
Below is a compilation of historical products and solutions related to Grid Engine, some of which have since been discontinued:
- Sun Constellation System
- Sun Visualization System
- Sun Compute Cluster
- ClusterVisionOS Distribution
- Rocks Cluster Distribution
- Univa's UniCluster Express
- Univa Grid Engine
- Some Grid Engine – an active free fork of SGE with additional enhancements, developed at Michigan Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan (2021)
- Son of Grid Engine – an inactive free fork featuring improvements, created by the University of Liverpool; included in default packages for Ubuntu/CentOS/RHEL gridengine (2021)
- Open Cluster Scheduler – an active free fork based on Univa Open Core Grid Engine, which itself descends from Sun Grid Engine (2025)
- BioTeam's iNquiry
- Nimbus – employs Grid Engine as a scheduler for virtual machines in cloud settings
See also
- Sun Ops Center – datacenter automation software from Sun
- Open Grid Forum