INDUSTRY

The U.S. Congress has approved spending $5 million to aid development of a high-speed computer grid that links Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame, school officials said. The $5 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy brings the total federal investment in the Northwest Indiana Computational Grid project to $6.5 million, officials said Wednesday. Last year, $1.5 million was allocated for the project. The grid links Purdue's West Lafayette campus with Purdue Calumet and Notre Dame using high-speed fiber optic connections that allow them to share supercomputer processing power, data storage and visualization tools. Researchers can also connect to the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont, Ill., and businesses can tap into the grid through industrial partnerships. Gerry McCartney, Purdue's interim vice president for information technology and chief information officer, said grid computing allows researchers to gain access to resources at other institutions on the grid. The grid appropriation effort was led in Congress by Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind. "These funds will bring a supercomputer network to Indiana on par with very few others in the country due to the high speed at which it operates," Lugar said in a statement.