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Virtual Grid Supercomputer Goes (Partly) Online

Posted by timothy on from the assembling-skynet dept.

hotsauce writes "The BBC is reporting that CERN (the guys who invented the Web) are working on a virtual supercomputer called the Grid. The Grid taps computing power from 12 countries to process data from a new supercollider that will simulate parts of the Big Bang. Phase One of the Grid just went online."

4 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. Datagrid homepage by maharg · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://eu-datagrid.web.cern.ch/eu-datagrid/

    --

    $ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
    @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
  2. Re:When will we do this ourselves? by sql*kitten · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sure, grids are cool, but when can we download a safe piece of software which to use for distributed calculations? When I'm not it need of doing stuff myself it would use my idle time for other people's calculations, and vice versa.

    You can get it here along with some case studies of how it's used in production.

    Distributed backups is another thing I'd like to have now, rather than tomorrow...

    Uuencode, split, and post to Usenet...

  3. Re:Under-hyped by pubjames · · Score: 4, Informative

    Einstein, of course, was an American, and like many other Americans, he was born somewhere else, and got here as quickly as he could.

    Einstein was born in 1879 and moved to America in 1931 at the age of 52.

  4. I used to work there... by mt-biker · · Score: 3, Informative

    I used to work in the computer centre at CERN, and they've been using distributed computing (read "clusters") for a long time (at least 10 years) now. By the time I left, there were already some 500 2 CPU Linux PCs in the computer centre, and a serious amount of thought was being given to building a mezzanine level within the computer centre to create more floor space for PCs. CERNs problem was always one of scale.

    Now it seems they want to buy floor space at other institutions around the world. :) I hope it all works out. What I'm wondering is what sort of network they have connecting the sites - the work load of these machines is very simple - but mostly IO bound. What sort of bandwidth do they need to make 15,000 TB available all over the world?

    More fun facts - at the time I left they had 5 STK Powderhorn silos, holding their current data. Prediction for LHC requirements (including better tape storage densities) was that they would need another 40 silos. If you've seen an STK Powderhorn, then you know just how ig the things are. So another building was to be built just for these silos. :)

    Oh, and as someone pointed out, the 15,000 TBs a year is just the data that gets kept - the live data from the detectors is preprocessed in the computer centre and "thinned out". The data rates coming into the computer centre are truly mind-boggling.