The Grid - a new internet but 10,000 times faster

[Ozi]

I hope this is the right part of the forum for this:

I found this article coming out of India. I have never heard of this before but does provide some positive thoughts about the future of online gaming. I hope some people find it interesting.

Whilst EU isn't mentioned, it does talk of online gaming and the increased capability to handle alot more concurrent users.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/File_Spinning_A_New_Web/articleshow/2935847.cms
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Spinning A New Web
9 Apr 2008, 0001 hrs IST

SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates
When the largest machine in the world — the 27-kilometre-long particle accelerator in Geneva — gets operational later this year it's expected to generate raw data equivalent to 56 million CDs annually — enough to make a stack 64 kilometres high.

There's simply no way any single agency can process so much information by itself without facing a meltdown. The solution: Farm it out to different research organisations around the world.

To do that, however, would require the services of the internet which, unfortunately, can neither deliver the material fast enough nor has the throughput capacity to handle the load. It would collapse. So the European Organisation for Nuclear Research did one better: it developed its own version of the World Wide Web — called "the Grid". It's a staggering 10,000 times faster.

Using state-of-the-art fibre optic cables and, ultimately, some 2,00,000 servers, this parallel internetwork which connects CERN to the US, Canada, Far East and Europe is so blazingly fast that it can download a full-length feature film in a matter of seconds.

Normally the process can take hours. Although the Grid is not available for domestic users yet, the high-speed computing project could ultimately revolutionise business, society and science in ways old-timers can't even
imagine.

Experts are already saying the Grid could 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.

More practically, it too can farm out massive amounts of research data. In one instance, it's helped design new drugs against malaria, which kills a million people worldwide each year.

Researchers used the Grid to analyse 140 million compounds — something that would have taken a standard internet-linked PC more than 400 years.

But there are privacy and hacking issues here which should ideally be addressed first. For example, who will police this platform as espionage and information theft flourish with the potential to rob both individuals and corporations alike of their intellectual property in a matter of seconds?

The film and music industries must be quaking in their boots; movies and recordings could change hands in a flash.

Automated security systems have not proved effective so far and only human monitoring seems to work against the dedicated hacker.

Still, speeds in this range might prevent any form of security from being effective.

 

[the-unknown]

LHC uses "the grid" to send the data to regional computing centers around the world, and from there the data is disseminated thru the internet.

If I recall correctly, they will produce a few PBs of data every year. I doubt you will be using that sort of facilities anytime.

Anyway, it's hard enough for me to download enough files to fill my 100 mbps home connection, I doubt faster connections (except for better uploads) will actually show much difference.

 

[WoenK]

Don't belive either, that the grid would be availabe to the public.
Took over 20 years till the internet was open to the general public and there was nothing else then. Now everything is somehow connected to some kind of network, enough possibilities to get speed without the grid.

What I really disliked about the articel were the random thrown in numbers. 10000 times faster than what ?
Does the internet have a certain speed ?
And where are those 2 million servers ?!
Can't even belive there are 2 million facilities studying that stuff.

This thing will surely be the biggest accomplishment of mankind for a long time, even if the black holes they create might destroy us (or rather according to quantuum mechanics and string theory, will surely destroy us and will not destroy us )

 

[Blackjack]

I read a similar article about this on Wired.com. It seems The Grid is intended for research purposes only and is not intended for public use. But the upside is that if you can talk your government into a 40 million dollar grant for research into atrox breeding habits, you might actually have a shot at getting access....

Blackjack

 

[Legion]

I very much believe we will be using the grid ourselves within some 15 years. Why? because everything sooner or later reaches the "market" so to speak, and it was the same with the internet before, we wouldnt get it but look.. were using it now.

 

[Vedder]

Ah the grid.

Yeah, there's a lot of potential in the grid for many things. Certainly interesting.
But it's not usable for real time on line games.

 

[Jorael]

old news... perhaps u should of searched before u posted...

https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/wlwc/108068-grid-coming-super-fast-internet.html

 

[aridash]

an example of what happens when non-tech people write tech articles. reading between the lines, the reason its blazingly fast is because data is all stored in each local centre but distributed over t'internet to the others. fibre is fast but unless they've layed their own between each office then they will be on the same backbone net as the rest of us and subject to the same quality of service. The WWW is just an application layer on top of the network and the internet is a framework of interconnected networks so this would become the internet, not replace it.

I very much believe we will be using the grid ourselves within some 15 years. Why? because everything sooner or later reaches the "market" so to speak, and it was the same with the internet before, we wouldnt get it but look.. were using it now.

very much so, but which "grid"? i've heard the term applied to several projects. the idea behind the Cell processor in the PS3 is to form a internetworking grid for utility computing (ie a huge distributed mainframe) which is a service already available from IBM (Cell partner/manufacturer, not that it necessarily uses Cell or PS3, but could potentially). it makes alot of sence for organisations with huge server farms to sell spare capacity and virtualisation facilitates this very easily, ie have a VM running "thegrid" that can use 50% of unused server capacity. I think a grid like topology is what makes Google work too. so we are already using it.

 

[Legion]

Ah the grid.

Yeah, there's a lot of potential in the grid for many things. Certainly interesting.
But it's not usable for real time on line games.

it might not be very usable for todays games but most likely in a few years when we will see streaming content and a lot higher resolutions etc etc in some 5-10 years.

an example of what happens when non-tech people write tech articles. reading between the lines, the reason its blazingly fast is because data is all stored in each local centre but distributed over t'internet to the others. fibre is fast but unless they've layed their own between each office then they will be on the same backbone net as the rest of us and subject to the same quality of service. The WWW is just an application layer on top of the network and the internet is a framework of interconnected networks so this would become the internet, not replace it.



very much so, but which "grid"? i've heard the term applied to several projects. the idea behind the Cell processor in the PS3 is to form a internetworking grid for utility computing (ie a huge distributed mainframe) which is a service already available from IBM (Cell partner/manufacturer, not that it necessarily uses Cell or PS3, but could potentially). it makes alot of sence for organisations with huge server farms to sell spare capacity and virtualisation facilitates this very easily, ie have a VM running "thegrid" that can use 50% of unused server capacity. I think a grid like topology is what makes Google work too. so we are already using it.

true that i guess

 

[Vedder]

...
Yeah, there's a lot of potential in the grid for many things. Certainly interesting.
But it's not usable for real time on line games.

it might not be very usable for todays games but most likely in a few years when we will see streaming content and a lot higher resolutions etc etc in some 5-10 years.
...

As useful and powerful as grids probably will become, I don't think they'll be useful for real time online games like EU.

The power of grids comes from massive parallelity, which is hard to utilize in EU and other real time games, and which also have overhead of data transfer between grid nodes.

 

[Tree-doctor]

This thing will surely be the biggest accomplishment of mankind for a long time, even if the black holes they create might destroy us (or rather according to quantuum mechanics and string theory, will surely destroy us and will not destroy us )

Ho yea. I though the same and in +, i realy close to the source irl ...
Thats weird lol.

Anyway, our actual www will be upgraded. It start to be in France at least, with optic fiber. Let say in around 15 years, we all have optic fiber at home.

 

[McCormick]

No, defenitly posted on the wrong part of the forum

It started in 2001 already :

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/03/42230

 

[Dion Red Strike]

The grid has been around a long time now... LHC is scheduled to go online very shortly (as in this year)....

I think the bigger story is the LHC.... but, it is not directly related to EU.... that being said, yes, the grid will, one day, become a commonplace item in homes, just like broadband connections today....

 

[Arkonen]

Nice to have a look at the near future, but what's next ... the Matrix ??

 

[Dextar]

As useful and powerful as grids probably will become, I don't think they'll be useful for real time online games like EU.

The power of grids comes from massive parallelity, which is hard to utilize in EU and other real time games, and which also have overhead of data transfer between grid nodes.

Heheh I heard the same such talk back in the late 80s.

Stuff like: "Normal people will not use the INTERNET, its only useful for researchers and scientists"

Or: "No one will use the INTERNET to buy things its too risky!"

Or My favorite: "Email will Never replace Regular Mail!"

It also reminds me of an oft quoted phrase I heard back in my Recording Studio Days: "The Noise wall will never be broken!"

This statement was quoted about analog recording and the number of times you could re-record a track or mix down several tracks to one track, each time you did you would get more and more noise and get signal loss.

Then along came digital technology and the noise wall wasn't just broken it was obliterated!

All of the above taught me the same lesson repeatedly!

"Never" really means "soon!"

And as the years pass, "soon" comes faster and faster!

Dex

 

[dalewj]

"Never" really means "soon!"

And as the years pass, "soon" comes faster and faster!

Dale will never get a ATH! NEVER

 

[NightwolfAA2k5]

"Never" really means "soon!"

And as the years pass, "soon" comes faster and faster!

I couldn't agree more

 

[aridash]

As useful and powerful as grids probably will become, I don't think they'll be useful for real time online games like EU.

The power of grids comes from massive parallelity, which is hard to utilize in EU and other real time games, and which also have overhead of data transfer between grid nodes.

this is quite right.

its not anything to do with "it wont happen", its a case of games dont lend themselves to parallelism. they are inheirently linear or sequential, even in a MMO context. one of the concepts with Cell is that you have a chip in your TV, one in your MP3 player, one in your washing machine even, and your PS3 utilises the processing capacity. problem is a) bandwidth for over the air data (bluetooth, 802.11) b) not knowing how much capacity is available (so you plan for worst case and dont take advantage) c) interprocessor sync/communiction overhead. In theory you might offload say AI to an external Cell, but then you have to be sure you will get the required dat back in time for a faster local Cell to utilise. realtime graphics is right out, since the bandwidth required just isnt possible with non-physical connections. but making a CGI film would be very well suitted as you are concerned with processing each frame seperately and compling an end product.

parallelism is great for large projects in science or mathematical modeling that are effectivly batch processed or can wait seconds/minutes/hours even days for a result to feed back into the core process, but not good for realtime applications. Its a whole new paradigm to what we currently use, it will create new types of applications (and games) rather than necessarily improving existing ones.

 

[Dextar]

Dale will never get a ATH! NEVER

"My odds of success dramatically improve with each attempt." -- John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind"




Dex

 

[Mkdesign]

Another of those articles with astonishing numbers, and no rough technical explanation whatsoever

Just picking random bits:

Researchers used the Grid to analyse 140 million compounds — something that would have taken a standard internet-linked PC more than 400 years.

I thought they had 2 millions of servers? that's a lot more than one standard internet-linked PC, or I must get something wrong...
Standard is once more not very practical definition...

 

[Jake Rogue]

All of the above taught me the same lesson repeatedly!

"Never" really means "soon!"

And as the years pass, "soon" comes faster and faster!

The Singularity is Near.

 

[Ozi]

Thanks to the link of that book Rogue, it looks interesting (I'll try and read it between hunts )

I'm always amazed at the quality of people on this forum. I am no expert on the physical structure of the web and yet have learned alot from reading the responses put on this thread. Thankyou to all who have contributed.

I guess optic fibre will be the next big thing as it eventually gets distributed out to homes. But then maybe that will be overtaken by wireless which has a much lower investment the physically running the optic fibre cables all over the place.

The biggest thing slowing down the optic fibre roll out is that no company wants to invest billions doing it only to find that by the time they are finished their technology has been superseeded.

 

[Vedder]

As useful and powerful as grids probably will become, I don't think they'll be useful for real time online games like EU.

The power of grids comes from massive parallelity, which is hard to utilize in EU and other real time games, and which also have overhead of data transfer between grid nodes.

Heheh I heard the same such talk back in the late 80s.
...
"Never" really means "soon!"

And as the years pass, "soon" comes faster and faster!
...

When will the web replace RL food?
When will the moon be made from cheese?
When you learn to fly by flapping your ears?
When will George Bush receive an Nobel Peace Prize?

You think "soon" is the answer to everything?

 

[Lobbe]

aha..... sounds interesting

 

[Naithen]

Perhaps this "grid" wont be available to gamers but if the technology is out there i dont see why a company like Microsoft wouldnt build a "gaming grid" that could be used as a specific destination for all online gaming. I would love to play a game that could handle millions of players all online on the same server at the same time , what epic battles you could have then

 

[Dextar]

When will the web replace RL food?
When will the moon be made from cheese?
When you learn to fly by flapping your ears?
When will George Bush receive an Nobel Peace Prize?

You think "soon" is the answer to everything?

Not to everything but when dealing with new technology whenever you hear sweeping statements you can usually bank on them being proved wrong at least in part, eventually.

Consider:

When will the Web replace RL food? Being that the body takes in food for energy to run on its not all that far-fetched (Just not practical atm.)

We regulate electrical energy by use of the net. Power generation stations are monitored and run by networked computer systems. Imagine if through genetic research we are able to adapt the body to run purely from energy from any handy source? Leaving us to just supplement our energy diet with minerals and vitamins? It would be handy I would gather.

When will the moon be made from cheese? My guess is when Kraft Foods becomes wealthy enough to afford the Nanotech Research to make our Nearest Neighbor into a Spherical Billboard that dominates our nightsky. Of course they may have to fight the United Federation of Planets to wrest control of the moon from them but hey weirder battles have taken place right here on Terra firma.


When you learn to fly by flapping your ears? With the advances in genetic research don't be surprised at the things people will do to their bodies in the search to stand out from the crowd.

300 years ago if you walked around with a small box that emitted disembodied voices (cell phone) you would have been burned as a witch.

Its hard to imagine what changes will take place in 300 years hence being that the speed of innovation and discovery is proceeding at a breakneck pace compared even to just 50 years ago.

When will George Bush receive an Nobel Peace Prize? Never. He has the wrong letter after his Name. (If it was a "D" instead of an "R" then he would probably get one for some monumental achievement like chewing gum or tyeing his own shoes, etc.)

In a world where we can have pastel-hued dancing monkeys at the tip of our fingers

anything is possible!

Dex

 

[Ozi]

Not to everything but when dealing with new technology whenever you hear sweeping statements you can usually bank on them being proved wrong at least in part, eventually.

Consider:

When will the Web replace RL food? Being that the body takes in food for energy to run on its not all that far-fetched (Just not practical atm.)

We regulate electrical energy by use of the net. Power generation stations are monitored and run by networked computer systems. Imagine if through genetic research we are able to adapt the body to run purely from energy from any handy source? Leaving us to just supplement our energy diet with minerals and vitamins? It would be handy I would gather.

When will the moon be made from cheese? My guess is when Kraft Foods becomes wealthy enough to afford the Nanotech Research to make our Nearest Neighbor into a Spherical Billboard that dominates our nightsky. Of course they may have to fight the United Federation of Planets to wrest control of the moon from them but hey weirder battles have taken place right here on Terra firma.


When you learn to fly by flapping your ears? With the advances in genetic research don't be surprised at the things people will do to their bodies in the search to stand out from the crowd.

300 years ago if you walked around with a small box that emitted disembodied voices (cell phone) you would have been burned as a witch.

Its hard to imagine what changes will take place in 300 years hence being that the speed of innovation and discovery is proceeding at a breakneck pace compared even to just 50 years ago.

When will George Bush receive an Nobel Peace Prize? Never. He has the wrong letter after his Name. (If it was a "D" instead of an "R" then he would probably get one for some monumental achievement like chewing gum or tyeing his own shoes, etc.)

In a world where we can have pastel-hued dancing monkeys at the tip of our fingers

anything is possible!

Dex

Nice one Dex, it is amazing how quickly things develop.

I came across an article yesterday saying that IBM have developed new technology for storage devices: phased array storage that will run 500 times faster than flash and is much smaller using 1/4 the power. The key message in the article was that IBM have hit a target for storage devices that they expected to reach in 2015. It just shows how quickly advances can come in computing.