Brussels, 14/09/2010 (Agence Europe) - Thanks to the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) project funded by the European Commission and inaugurated on Tuesday 14 September, European researchers will now have sustainable and continuous access to the combined processing power of over 200,000 desktop computers in more than 30 European countries. The EGI, the largest collaborative production grid infrastructure ever created for cyberscience, will enable teams of researchers in different geographical locations to work on a problem as if they were in the same laboratory. The promotion of research infrastructure such as EGI is part of the EU's digital strategy, the Commission initiative to maximise the social and economic potential of information and communication technologies. “European researchers' access to greater computing power will help them to tackle major research challenges in areas such as climate change and health care. The European Grid Infrastructure will help strengthen Europe's hand in research and give our scientists the support they need, whilst saving energy and cutting costs”, said Neelie Kroes, Digital Agenda Commissioner.
The massive processing capacity required in research such as climate change and health can either be sourced from large “super computers”, or by tapping the processing capacity of thousands of otherwise idle desktop computers connected via high-speed communications networks. Two networks like EGI share out the e-tasks involving large quantities of data between several thousand computers. The EGI-inSPIRE project will give European researchers access to the aggregated processing power of 200,000 desk-top computers hosted by more than 300 centres around the world. The Commission will be contributing up to €25 million to this €73 million project over four years. Other funding is provided by national funds. The EGI precursor, Enabling Grid for eScience, received more than €100 million in EU funding over 8 years. Today it is used by 13,000 researchers and, for example, allows physicists to study the smallest known particles and helps biologists and scientists to develop new drugs for diseases like avian flu and malaria. Enabling different research communities to hook up to the processing capacity of existing computers could also lead to major cost and energy savings. (I.L./transl.jl)