Data Pipeline Boosts ‘Net Speed at Southern Schools
Published Apr 08, 2003
When the new information highway connecting Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Atlanta is up and running, significant advances in science and technology will be made available to Tennessee universities and other Southern institutes of learning in a matter of seconds.
“Think of the data pipeline as a six-lane freeway as opposed to a country road,” says Thomas Zacharia, associate lab director for ORNL’s Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate.
The 10-gigabit (10 billion bits per second) connection will allow for an increased flow of information between Oak Ridge researchers and universities in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky and Florida.
The link will connect the Department of Energy’s ESnet computer network with Internet2, the network of top-tier universities, at speeds up to 20 times faster than the previous ORNL connection. With the new link, a data file the size of a four-hour film could be transmitted in a mere six seconds.
The network of fiber optic cables, which will run from the Oak Ridge facility through Chattanooga to Georgia Tech in Atlanta, will also enhance the Oak Ridge-Chattanooga technology corridor by positioning the region as a hub for new research and its positive consequences.
Researchers predict that the outcome of such transfers of research information at high rates will bring a new level of economic development to the region.
Zacharia notes that the research involved in ORNL’s new pipeline is just the beginning, and will lay the foundation for the transfer of petabyte-sized (1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes) files within the next five to 10 years.
Current Weather Conditions In Nashville, TN (37243)
Partly Cloudy, and 67 ° F. For more details?
Click here...
