CERN GRID - 10,000 times faster than broadband
April 7, 2008
he European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) is working on a new super fast Internet infrastructure called Grid. CERN, the particle physics center based in Geneva that created the web, has built “the grid,” a replacement for the Internet is expected to be 10,000 times faster than the regular broadband speed.
The UK’s Times Online has published a story on how a new “grid” computing project, designed to capture data from CERN’s (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) new Large Hadron Collider or LHC, the world’s largest particle accelerator due to be switched on in the European summer – or in other words, soon. The Times Online article quotes David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a ‘leading figure in the grid project’, as saying that the grid technology being used to capture data from the LHC project “could revolutionise society”, saying specifically that: “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine”.
It took almost 15 years and $8 billion to construct for CERN. The LHC is located in a 27-km circular tunnel 100 meters below ground level outside Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border. It has already been used to help design new drugs against malaria by analyzing 140m compounds, an undertaking that would have taken 420 years on a standard internet-linked PC.
Given the fact that most countries are still struggling with ADSL2+, fibre rollouts, WiMAX networks and 3.5G HSPA upgrades to existing 2G and 3G networks, CERN’s superfast broadband grid project is certainly making plenty of waves on the international technology news circuit.
But the reality is that consumers will have to likely wait years before the technology is sufficiently advanced – and affordable enough – to be made available for consumers. Still… the prospect sounds cool, and more speed is always better!
