Grid of 100,000 computers heralds new internet dawn
The dawn of a new internet age has begun. A network of supercomputers, known as the Grid, is to revolutionise the speed at which information is downloaded to personal computers.
The power of the Grid is such that downloading films should take only seconds, not hours, and processing music albums just a single second. Video-phone calls should also cost no more than a local call. More importantly, it should help to narrow the search for cures for diseases.
The Grid, a network of 100,000 computers, is to be connected to the world’s largest machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is designed for projects, such as large research and engineering jobs, which need to crunch huge quantities of data, but scientists believe it will eventually be used on home computers.
The Grid allows scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to get access to the unemployed processing power of thousands of computers in 33 countries to deal with the data created by the LHC.
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Users would be able to tap into massive amounts of processing power, but the source of the power would change, depending on availability.Processing tasks will be distributed between 11 gateway computer centres in ten countries, including Britain, which will share them out between more than 140 sites.
Hey, wait a minute. This is in Europe. Darn! We here in the US are stuck with our painfully slow (compared to many other countries) connections with data caps (Crapcast, I’m talkin’ to you!) and all the rest. And so the dream dies…
They have been using this for SETI for years, and this is also the same idea behind zombie bot machine army’s that hackers use to launch DDOS attacks. The ability to use processing power of a large array of computers is old news.
“The power of the Grid is such that downloading films should take only seconds, not hours, and processing music albums just a single second.”
So, the IP holders are going to allow their content to be hosted off of there own servers?
Okay, let’s all hold our breath…
This is all very nice. However, high on my priority list is 1) being able to get decent upload/ download speed on a broadband internet connection, and 2) being able to make and receive cell phone calls reliably.
Wake me up when those two missions have been accomplished.
Oh yeah europe’s the place to be, it’s not too late emmigrate! You want great technological resources, socialized medicine, a survivable inflation rate, and an endless number of etc… YOU’LL NEVER GET IT IN THE USA. So pack your bags, don’t worry about languages, they can be learned quickly. Don’t worry about a job either teaching english as a foriegn language is always a way to make money here. Abandon the US or go down with the ship…
Hollywoodians were dismayed at the poor numbers of viewers watching ‘live’ Heroes last week.
Yet…
Over 10 million unique downloaders of the show over bittorrent.
I’ve been getting HDTV quality shows like this for months now. I won’t be buying a BluRay player, until they are 99$ and can playback hi-def AVI Divx.
Who needs DVRs anymore? A cheap 500$ dual core laptop, USB hard drive, a few cables long enough. Full HD home system that is 1080p.
Hollywood doesn’t get it – if they made high quality torrents available with hundreds of Peers for their shows that had commercials in them, people would download these shows by the millions.
Goddam, IBM has come along way since tracking holocaust victims. This new interweb is designed to categorize and store everything about everyone since birth.
Anyone notice that the CERN logo is a stylized 666.
On 60 minutes, last night, they were interviewing someone about the Large Hadron Collider. They were asked to name a specific benefit that the research done at CERN has produced in past.
The only answer given was “the world wide web” – which, of course, was developed by CERN as a method for publishing scientific research.
But the answer completely missed the point of the question. First, it didn’t cost $8 billion to develop the web. Second, researching sub-atomic particles did not lead to someone “discovering” the web. All that happened is that a computer programmer thought up a way to publish documents through DARPAnet.
This is like the “Going to the Moon” thing.
It acomplishes not much per se.
But in the process of getting there, USA effectively Jumpstarted a lot of industries that didn’t exist before.
… and let the games begin.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7637586.stm
‘a storm brewing in France over plans to build a database to hold details of people considered likely to breach public order.”
Soo…. Is the “Grid” the new “Cloud?” Kinda like the new web 2.0?
So I can reach my Comcastic cap in an hour instead of a month….kool!
How is it going to be less expensive if we have to pay per bit?
The Grid is only as good as the entry point to your house. We all know which companies have their grubby paws all over that piece.