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The End of the Internet????

Nodz86

By Nodz86
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Nodz86 Grand Master

Nodz86

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Unlocking The Internet Of The Future

 

By Sky News SkyNews - Thursday, April 10 09:27 am

 

The internet, as we know it, could be obsolete within a decade.

 

Forget dial-up; forget broadband: The future, it seems, is The Grid.

 

It's the brainchild of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research based in Geneva.

 

It's there that Sir Tim Berners-Lee first invented the internet, so it's appropriate that the next stage in its evolution should emerge there.

 

But what is the Grid?

 

In fact, it is a spin-off from another major research project. For several years, the particle physicists at CERN have been building a device called the Large Hadron Collider.

 

Knowing they would need massive processing capability to cope with the data from the new device, the scientists set about integrating thousands of computers all around the world.

 

Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the project, says: "We need so much processing power, if all the computers were here at CERN there would be a problem getting enough electricity to run them.

 

"We had to have a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research partners in other countries."

 

That network of linked computers - connected by superfast fibre-optic cable and combining together to act as one giant super-computer - is the Grid and, one day, it won't just be for scientists. We'll all be connected to it.

 

It's not actually a new principle. SETI@home is a programme for PCs which is helping to analyse the data of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

 

It's been downloaded by half a million public-spirited people who allow the spare processing power of their personal computers to be used remotely by the astronomers to number-crunch their scientific data.

 

But while SETI@home runs on private PCs and over existing telephone cables, CERN's Grid uses fibre-optic links to dedicated resources in major computer centres and can therefore handle much more complex calculations.

 

The long-term possibilities for home entertainment are immense.

 

It's estimated that connection speeds could be 1,000 times faster than current broadband capabilities.

 

Imagine being able to download feature films in the blink of an eye, or the entire Beatles back catalogue in less than a second. Grainy webcam images would be replaced by crystal clear pictures and sound, and video gaming would be transformed.

 

According to Professor David Britton, a leading figure in the Grid project: "With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine."

 

And there are also medical applications. It's already been used to help research anti-malarial drugs.

 

Researchers used the Grid to analyse 140 million different compounds - a process which would have taken 420 years to complete on a conventional internet-linked computer. The Grid might soon be used to help unlock the secrets of the human genome.

 

CERN has produced a flash movie to explain the project's evolution.

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Guest RB26DETT

Guest RB26DETT

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yeah. it'd take a while to wipe off the internet completely when they finally get the Grid up and running. me thinks its going to be expensive, but it is really fascinating! NO MORE LAG!

 

+rep nodz, worth reading. ;)

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Nodz86 Grand Master

Nodz86

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This system is surrently used buy very inteligent scientists needing vast amounts of data about an experiment that they are doing. Below is a bit from there website about what the grid is used for:

 

When the LHC begins operations, it will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually – enough to fill 100 000 DVDs a year!

 

Thousands of scientists around the world will want to access and analyse this data, so CERN is building a distributed computing and data storage infrastructure: the LHC Computing Grid (LCG).

 

Now for those who want to know what LHC is, it is basically a big scientific experiment in which they are recreating the Big Bang.

 

The Large Hadron Collider

Our understanding of the Universe is about to change...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the miniscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

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Pherelas Grand Master

Pherelas

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This system is surrently used buy very inteligent scientists needing vast amounts of data about an experiment that they are doing. Below is a bit from there website about what the grid is used for:

 

 

 

Now for those who want to know what LHC is, it is basically a big scientific experiment in which they are recreating the Big Bang.

 

 

Watched a program on this the other day, well was ages ago but never mind, its really intressting. There is currently one in the US which isn't big enough so there building a new on in mainland europe as you said. Really intressting, why do they need big computing power for this? Modeling it yes but not for the particle accelerator.

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Nodz86 Grand Master

Nodz86

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its probably got a load of sensors and probes and stuff for the data its collecting from the LHC combine that with all the number crunching (as the particles are small the numbers after the decimal place probably wont start for millions of places) and scientists from around the world using it.

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