The 'EGI-Design Study', running from September 2007 to December 2009, will rely on National Grid Infrastructures (NGI), with the ultimate goal of launching the construction of the European Grid Initiative (EGI). The aim of the EGI will be to enable European scientists to make the most of grid network technology in their research endeavours.
Grid networks are used to perform computing tasks on very large data sets, which are broken down into smaller portions.
While national grid initiatives already provide local connectivity and resources to researchers, the EGI will enable pan-European scientific collaboration via the connection of thousands of computers in universities and research laboratories.
The new EU initiative, making accessing resources on widely-distributed computers as easy as accessing those on the user's own desktop, is expected by those involved to have a major impact by changing the way in which scientists work.
For example, in order to tackle the recent outbreak of avian flu, scientists needed to accelerate their research into possible new drugs. The existing e-infrastructure allowed an international group of researchers to test a huge number of drugs in a very short period of time. With this new supercomputer this timeframe could be reduced still further.
For further information, please visit:
http://www.eu-egi.org
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