PHYSICS

Data sharing and super-powerful grid-based computing are a critical component of Europe’s future research infrastructure. Thanks to EU funding, CERN and its partners have come one step closer to a 24-hour grid platform to help European scientists crunch increasingly heavy datasets. CERN – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research and the world's largest particle physics centre near Geneva (CH) – announced a successor to the successful European DataGrid (EDG) project, which came to an end in March. The new scheme, snappily named ‘Enabling Grid for E-Science in Europe’ (EGEE), will go to the next level in processing the huge amount of data being produced in fields of science burdened with heavy problem-solving needs, such as high energy physics and biomedical research. Putting the EDG project to bed last month, the European Commission said it was fully satisfied with the system’s overall performance and achievements. The pilot phase proved that a worldwide computing grid, capable of providing shared data and computing resources across the European scientific community, could be created relatively cheaply (around €10 million) and quickly (taking just three years). It also showed that large consortia – EDG had around 500 scientists in 21 partner institutes and organisations across Europe – could work together to produce the goods. At its peak, the EDG test bed shared more than 1 000 computers with more than 15 terabytes (1 terabyte = 1012 bytes) of data at 25 sites across Europe, Russia and Taiwan. Its technology formed the basis for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid, and the software developed in the project is being used by biomedical and earth observation institutes. But where one phase of the project ends, another begins. The four-year EGEE project will ensure that the EDG becomes widely used and accepted by the scientific community. In charge of the new scheme, Fabrizio Gagliardi says they know the technology works now and the job of the EGEE will be to make it available to all of Europe’s scientific stakeholders, including industrial research and development. “Like the World Wide Web, which was initially conceived at CERN for rather specialised scientific purposes, the impact of this emerging grid technology on European society is difficult to predict in detail at this stage, but it is likely to be huge,” he predicts. Research round the clock Grid computing is a form of large-scale networking where the users need not be in the same country, let alone the same city or building. It differs from conventional networks, which focus on communication among devices, because it harnesses the unused processing cycles of all computers in a network in order to solve problems too heavy for any one machine or local network to handle. Officially launched on 1 April, the EGEE project will build on advances made in grid technology and the EDG experience to develop research infrastructure spanning Europe which will be available to scientists 24 hours a day. CERN will continue as project leader coordinating the 70 partner organisations across Europe, including new EU Member States and non-EU states such as Russia and Israel. The project will concentrate on three core areas. Firstly, it plans to build a consistent, robust and secure grid network. After which, the goal will be to improve and maintain the middleware – software likened to plumbing because it connects two sides of an application and passes data between them – in order to deliver a reliable service to users. The third area is to attract new users from both industry and academia, and to provide support and training on how to use the EDG. The final grid will be built on the EU Research Network GEANT and will make use of the expertise generated by past EU, national and international grid projects.