The EU has awarded r9.8 ($9.23) million to the Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) for the developoment of a new world wide web that will carry very dense scientific data. The huge physics reseach centre in Geneva claims to have changed the way the world works through its installation ten years ago of a crude data exchange service that evolved into the internet.
The proposed DataGrid will link supercomputers, processor farms, disks, major databases, informatic systems, collaborative tools and users in a high-speed network designed to take the strain off the current web. Five other European scientific institutions are collaborating on the project.
DataGrid will be designed to carry the mass of data generated by CERN’s planned particle accelerator, due to come on stream in 2005.
