European Grid Initiative
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Type of site
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Scientific support |
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| Website | www |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | 2010 |
EGI is a series of efforts to provide access to high-throughput computing resources across Europe using grid computing techniques. The EGI links centres in different European countries to support international research in many scientific disciplines. Following a series of research projects such as DataGrid and Enabling Grids for E-sciencE, the EGI Foundation was formed in 2010 to sustain the services of EGI.
Science has become increasingly based on open collaboration between researchers across the world. It uses high-capacity computing to model complex systems and to process experimental results. In the early 21st century, grid computing became popular for scientific disciplines such as high-energy physics and bioinformatics to share and combine the power of computers and sophisticated, often unique, scientific instruments in a process known as e-Science.
In addition to their scientific value, on 30 May 2008 The EU Competitiveness Council promoted "the essential role of e-infrastructures as an integrating mechanism between Member States, regions as well as different scientific disciplines, also contributing to overcoming digital divides."
EGI is partially supported by the EGI-InSPIRE EC project.
The European DataGrid project was first funded in 2001 for three years as one of the Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development series. Fabrizio Gagliardi was project manager of DataGrid and its budget was about 12 million Euro, with the full project named "Research and Technological Development for an International Data Grid".
A major motivation behind the concept was the massive data requirements of the Large Hadron Collider project of the Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN).
On 1 April 2004 the Enabling Grids for E-Science in Europe (EGEE) project was funded by the European Commission through the Directorate-General for Information Society and Media, led by the information technology division of CERN. This 24-month project of the Sixth Framework Programme had a cost of over 46 million Euro. The consortium included 70 institutions in 27 countries. The LHC Computing Grid continued to be a major application of EGEE technology. By 1 April 2006 the "in Europe" was dropped from the project name, but the acronym was kept as EGEE-II for Enabling Grids for E-sciencE. This two-year phase cost about 52.6 million Euro. The new name reflected a more global extent, such as a cluster of computers at the Institute Of Microelectronic Systems in Malaysia. By 2007 the EGI was supported by 36 countries.
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