How CERN’s Grid May Place the Power of the World’s Computers in Your Hands

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The combined power of the world’s computers could soon be placed in the palm of your hand thanks to technology that is partly being developed at the home of the Large Hadron Collider.

Scientists at CERN in Switzerland and in the US have been developing a new kind of computer system that is already being described as the successor to the World Wide Web.

Known as the Worldwide Grid, it would give users access to the computing power of all the machines connected to a network no matter where they are in the world.

The technology could turn desktop computers into supercomputers and is now being adapted to allow mobile devices such as phones and tablets to connect.

Physicists at CERN already have access to the world’s biggest Grid computing network, combining more than 200,000 computers together.

It allows them to analyse more than 26 million gigabytes of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) each year. » | Richard Gray, Science Correspondent | Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The Internet of the Future: The Grid
YAHOO NEWS (UK & IRELAND): The internet, as we know it, could be obsolete within a decade.

Forget dial-up; forget broadband: The future, it seems, is The [sic] 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. Unlocking the Internet of the Future >>>

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