The Commission is contributing €25 million over four years to the EGI-InSPIRE project to link the processing capacity of desktop computers when they would otherwise be idle. The EGI – which is billed as the largest collaborative production grid infrastructure for e-science ever created - will enable teams of researchers in different geographical locations to work on a problem as if they were in the same laboratory.
EGI is part of the Digital Agenda for Europe, the Commission’s strategy to maximise the impact of ICT.
While the PRACE initiative (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) provides access to supercomputers, EGI will make it possible to tap the processing capacity of thousands of otherwise idle desktop computers by connecting them via high-speed networks.
On average, a desktop computer remains idle for around 60-85 per cent of the time. EGI-InSPIRE will give European researchers access to the aggregated processing power of 200,000 desktop computers hosted by more than 300 centres around the world. The Commission is contributing €25 million over four years to the €73 million project. Other funding is provided from national sources such as National Grid Initiatives.
The precursor to EGI, the Enabling Grid for eScience, received more than €100 million in EU funding over 8 years. It is used today by 13,000 researchers and is for example used by physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
Enabling researchers to hook up to the processing capacity of existing computers could lead to cost and energy savings. In the next few years, Europe is expected to invest more than €2 billion in new ICT research infrastructures and the Commission says savings can be made if researchers use processing power available via the EGI, rather than developing their own alternative networks or supercomputers. EGI may also be used to test cloud-based technologies and services.
The EGI will be coordinated by the Amsterdam-based organisation EGI.eu, established in February 2010 to manage and operate the pan-European grid infrastructure. Together, EGI.eu and representatives from National Grid Initiatives will operate and further develop the EGI infrastructure to guarantee its long-term availability.
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