The age of the Grid

The first years of the new century have seen a dramatic increase in the number of internet users (1.3 billion "" or 20 per cent of the world population), usage and bandwidth demand as new patterns of usage (Web 2.0) grow exponentially. Against this backdrop now comes the promise of a superfast internet, based on technology which has the computing power to change the way in which future generations collaborate and communicate. The technology is an offshoot of the 'Big Bang' idea from the European Centre for Nuclear Research "" often referred to as 'The Birthplace of the Internet' "" which is being used to increase the speed of the internet by almost 10,000 times.

The action started when CERN began working on a much-debated plan 15 years ago to recreate the Big Bang. Despite opposition, the technology is complete and now in a cooling process. On the 'Red Button Day' (later this summer), scientists will turn on CERN's particle accelerator, called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and also open 'The Grid'. The 27-km-long LHC will shoot beams of protons at one another in a bid to recreate conditions similar to those that followed the Big Bang. This will produce enough data each year to fill 56 million CDs. The data cannot be stored locally. It needs a network capable of handling and analysing enormous amounts of data "" which explains the need of a grid.

The Grid, thus, has been under construction for the past seven years. It is a kind of parallel internet, comprising 55,000 servers connected to each other using fibre-optic cables and modern routers. Fibre-optic cables run from CERN to 11 other research institutes around the world. Each of these centres connects to existing high-speed academic networks. The internet, on the other hand, relies on technology originally designed for telephony, which slows the transfer of data. Given its extreme speed, The Grid is said to have the potential to offer everything from high density (HD) video telephony to the transmission of holographic images. Downloading music should not take more than 5 seconds. Experts say the Grid will also lead to 'Cloud Computing' "" where users store all data online. The Cloud Computing concept is being used by IT giants like IBM, Google and Yahoo!. Closer home, IT services provider Wipro too has been touting the concept.

The Grid is not a new concept. 'Distributed' or 'Grid' computing refers to a special type of parallel computing which draws on the power of computers (with a central processing unit, storage, power supply, network interface, etc.,) that are connected to a network (private, public or the internet). Grid computing is well known through public projects like Seti@home (which, since 1999, has used spare capacity on thousands of small computers to search for evidence of extra-terrestrial life). Security vendors are also using the technology to speed up the detection of internet security threats.