Brussels, 16/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - Creating a high performance "data grid" made to push back, in the coming years, the limits of the processing capability of the World Wide Web (www): this is the aim of the project that the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) intends to complete with the financial support of the European Union (EU).
It is during last December that CERN, leader in the project named "DataGrid", concluded with the EU the contract allowing to develop this data grid. The Union will take part to the value of EUR 9.8 million spread out over a three year period. This project is considered by experts as the ideal practice run for a new model of world scale data processing and similar to the natural development of the World Wide Web, it too developed by CERN.
The data grid will decentralised computer resources, thanks to a new high-speed network linked between two supercomputers, batteries of processors, data bases, computer systems and users. It will use the open source codes and will offer data speeds and means of calculation at an unprecedented level. Software interfaces will open new possibilities for cooperation between operating systems.