A new "international data grid" supercomputing system is being planned by
scientists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Argonne National
Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and their colleagues worldwide.
Lothar Bauerdick of Fermi Lab says, "It's a democratization of science. The
resources will be there and you can tap into them. It gives equal
opportunities to everyone to become part of science and part of the
discoveries. It started as a need in science but offers a transforming
technology for society." And Ian Foster of the Argonne facility explains:
"The goal is to accelerate the handling of the dramatic increase in the
amount of data scientists have to deal with. In the face of this data
explosion the capability of an individual scientist to actually ask and get
answers to interesting questions has become challenging. The data grid will
allow them to get answers by harnessing large numbers of computing and
storage resources to perform their computations." Foster is considered the
father of grid computing. (AP/San Jose Mercury News 2 Sep 2003)
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