It is used to search for extraterrestrial life. It helps to detect breast cancer and oil fields. It is tipped to change the way we will work in future.
It is called "grid computing" and is billed as the next phase of the ever-developing information technology revolution.
Called by some the third great leap after the Internet and World Wide Web, grid or distributed computing links hundreds or thousands of computers and could one day provide vast computing power or data storage to companies who pay only for what they consume.
On the Internet, computers hook up to exchange information in all kinds of forms, while on a grid they join forces to accomplish a given task.
A pioneer has been the project called SETIAhome, a never-ending search which began in the 1990s for extraterrestrial signals. The program harnesses idle computers in homes, businesses and universities to sift through data picked up by radiotelescopes.
Life sciences, including earth observation, are already leading applications of grid computing. In Britain, the IBM/Oxford eDiamond project, a part of the government's e-Science initiative, helps doctors detect and treat breast cancer, with five hospitals or screening centers sharing a grid in what experts call a major breakthrough. That number could increase to 92 cancer hospitals across Britain, a potential shot in the arm for the country's National Health Service.
Another IBM/Oxford University project with software groups United Devices and Accelerys along with the European biotech firm EvotechOAI, could use two million computers to develop a new drug against smallpox, a feared bioterror weapon.
"[Grid computing] will change our way of working, it will be a qualitative change," said Guy Wormser, deputy science director at the French nuclear and particle physics institute known as IN2P3.
The institute together with IBM are working with others to link nuclear research centers in Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, as well as the European Space Agency. To make grids widely available, computer processors, networks, software, diagnostic tools and standards must first be integrated so a company can submit a job and get it done without caring whether that happens in Cape Town, Copenhagen or Kowloon.
IBM has begun to "gridify" a European oil group's information technology sites in Asia, Europe and the US. Seismic research and reservoir simulations are under similar development.
IBM has also provided a bank with a system to calculate its risk position in financial markets every 15 minutes.
The aptly-named Monte Carlo simulation provides an ace in the hole against rivals that can only identify such risk every 12 or 24 hours.
Smaller banks could combine the power of idle workstations, typically used at only 15 percent to 20 percent of their capacity, to build a system that Wormser says might multiply by up to five times the bank's internal resources.
The aerospace and automotive industries are seen as potential grid users as they outsource data-intensive tasks such as design work requiring modeling or simulations.
The French institute IN2P3 needs grid technology to crunch data that will begin pouring in from a nuclear collider at CERN, the European Institute for particle physics in Geneva that created the World Wide Web.
But deputy director Wormser says they want to work with small biotechnology companies to test the system, since drug development and genomic research requires just the kind of powerful, yet flexible service a grid is designed for.
RSS