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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / OCTOBER 6, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 40
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Special Features:
CERN TURNS ON MAJOR
GRID
The first phase of an ambitious computing network designed to handle huge
amounts of data has been launched.
The network, dubbed the Grid, has been set up by the Cern labs in Geneva to
tap into the processing power of computers in 12 countries.
The aim of the project is to handle data from an experiment on how the
universe began.
Cern believes the Grid could eventually provide people access to a vast
pool
of processing power from their desktops.
Next-Generation Network
The idea behind Grid technology is to link up computers around the world
over
the Internet to create a new generation of enormously powerful machines.
The networks are needed because some problems in science are just too large
for any one machine to tackle by itself.
Cern's Grid will initially be used to handle the terabytes of data
generated
by an upcoming particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC).
The technology now being deployed for particle physics will ultimately
change
the way that science and business are undertaken in the years to come.
The LHC is going to test the Big Bang theory by smashing protons together
at
high energies.
The data generate by the experiment are expected to fill the equivalent of
more than 20 million CDs a year and some 70,000 computers would be needed to
analyze the data.
With the LHC Computing Grid project, scientists will be able to access
computing resources across the world as though they were on their machine.
"The Grid enables us to harness the power of scientific computing centers
wherever they may be to provide the most powerful computing resource the world
has to offer," said Les Robertson, project manager at Cern.
'Profound Effect'
The first phase covers processing resources from research institutes in 12
countries -- the United Kingdom, the Unites States, Switzerland, the Czech
Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain and
Taiwan.
The final goal of the Grid is to bring together the computing power of
scientific centers across the world to create a virtual supercomputer
network.
In the long-term, Grid technology is predicted to revolutionize the world
of
computing. Ultimately, it is expected to be able to provide huge processing
power on tap to anyone.
"The technology now being deployed for particle physics will ultimately
change
the way that science and business are undertaken in the years to come," said
Ian Halliday, chief executive of the UK's Particle Physics and Astronomy
Research Council (PParc).
"This will have a profound effect on the way society uses information
technology, much as the worldwide Web did."
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