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  • Coming soon: superfast internet

    From The Sunday Times
    April 6, 2008
    Coming soon: superfast internet
    Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

    THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.
    At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.
    The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.
    David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.
    The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.
    Cern, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realised the LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs - enough to make a stack 40 miles high.
    This meant that scientists at Cern - where Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1989 - would no longer be able to use his creation for fear of causing a global collapse.
    This is because the internet has evolved by linking together a hotchpotch of cables and routing equipment, much of which was originally designed for telephone calls and therefore lacks the capacity for high-speed data transmission.
    By contrast, the grid has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data. The 55,000 servers already installed are expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years.
    Professor Tony Doyle, technical director of the grid project, said: “We need so much processing power, there would even be an issue about getting enough electricity to run the computers if they were all at Cern. The only answer was a new network powerful enough to send the data instantly to research centres in other countries.”
    That network, in effect a parallel internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables that run from Cern to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe and around the world.
    One terminates at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory at Harwell in Oxfordshire.
    From each centre, further connections radiate out to a host of other research institutions using existing high-speed academic networks.
    It means Britain alone has 8,000 servers on the grid system – so that any student or academic will theoretically be able to hook up to the grid rather than the internet from this autumn.
    Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.
    “It will lead to what’s known as cloud computing, where people keep all their information online and access it from anywhere,” he said.
    Computers on the grid can also transmit data at lightning speed. This will allow researchers facing heavy processing tasks to call on the assistance of thousands of other computers around the world. The aim is to eliminate the dreaded “frozen screen” experienced by internet users who ask their machine to handle too much information.
    The real goal of the grid is, however, to work with the LHC in tracking down nature’s most elusive particle, the Higgs boson. Predicted in theory but never yet found, the Higgs is supposed to be what gives matter mass.
    The LHC has been designed to hunt out this particle - but even at optimum performance it will generate only a few thousand of the particles a year. Analysing the mountain of data will be such a large task that it will keep even the grid’s huge capacity busy for years to come.
    Although the grid itself is unlikely to be directly available to domestic internet users, many telecoms providers and businesses are already introducing its pioneering technologies. One of the most potent is so-called dynamic switching, which creates a dedicated channel for internet users trying to download large volumes of data such as films. In theory this would give a standard desktop computer the ability to download a movie in five seconds rather than the current three hours or so.
    Additionally, the grid is being made available to dozens of other academic researchers including astronomers and molecular biologists.
    It has already been used to help design new drugs against malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills 1m people worldwide each year. Researchers used the grid to analyse 140m compounds - a task that would have taken a standard internet-linked PC 420 years.
    “Projects like the grid will bring huge changes in business and society as well as science,” Doyle said.
    “Holographic video conferencing is not that far away. Online gaming could evolve to include many thousands of people, and social networking could become the main way we communicate.
    “The history of the internet shows you cannot predict its real impacts but we know they will be huge.”
    Buy the ticket, take the ride.

  • #2
    No no no the proper headline should be

    Coming soon......Full length HD quality porn
    For Gallifrey! For Victory! For the end of time itself!!

    Comment


    • #3
      No no no the proper headline should be

      Coming soon......Full length HD quality porn


      NOW that's interesting

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by bolo121 View Post
        No no no the proper headline should be

        Coming soon......Full length HD quality porn
        Why not just have the "cast" act it out in your living room!? Now that would definitely be HD!!!
        “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~ Jimi Hendrix
        "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
        sigpic

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Southie View Post
          Why not just have the "cast" act it out in your living room!? Now that would definitely be HD!!!

          :)) Although i'm a porn fan, just like the rest of me lads, I prefer to reenact it in real life myself :))

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Mobbme View Post
            :)) Although i'm a porn fan, just like the rest of me lads, I prefer to reenact it in real life myself :))
            Then use a tripod for your camera!
            “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~ Jimi Hendrix
            "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
            sigpic

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Southie View Post
              Then use a tripod for your camera!


              I've recorded me "making out" with my gf, but she just deletes it right after lol won't let me keep it.

              Comment


              • #8
                1. Did Al Gore invent this one?

                2. Does this cause global warming?
                "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Gonna have to upgrade my hard drive space :D

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I thought we all agreed that the LHC was going to cause the end of the world as we know it?
                    sigpicUSS North Dakota

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by bolo121 View Post
                      No no no the proper headline should be

                      Coming soon......Full length HD quality porn
                      Someone has to lower the tone:))

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Mobbme View Post


                        I've recorded me "making out" with my gf, but she just deletes it right after lol won't let me keep it.
                        Doesn't want you making a fortune off it then?
                        Welcome, you step into a forum of the flash bang, chew toy hell, and shove it down your throat brutal honesty. OoE

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Debbie View Post
                          Doesn't want you making a fortune off it then?
                          hahaha ;)

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