The European Commission today announced the launch of the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI). With an estimated investment of 73 million euros, EGI, secures 25 million euros with the EU, which in this way facilitates the execution of a project that aims to guarantee continuous access to a combined computing capacity of more than 200 thousand computers, spread over more than 300 centers worldwide.
Over the next four years, the funds allocated to the project will be used to link unused processing capacity and ensure the necessary power to carry out research projects that require high calculations in the field of environment, health and energy.
«EGI, the largest collaborative production network infrastructure ever created for e-Science, will allow teams of geographically distant researchers to work on a problem as if they were in the same laboratory», underlines the European Commission in a press release.
Projects like EGI fit the objectives of the European digital agenda, which provides for the strengthening of European R&D infrastructures. The initiative connects with another, guided by identical objectives, which TeK had already noted in June, PRACE. Another related initiative, and a precursor to EGI, is the Enabling Grid for eScience, which has received more than 100 million euros of investment from the European Union over the last 8 years, and is currently used by 13,000 researchers.
Data made available by the EC indicate that a PC is inactive 60 to 85 percent of the time. At the service of a network such as EGI, which distributes IT tasks that involve a large amount of data due to the processing capacity of many thousands of computers, it allows reducing downtime.
