Heralding a practical new way to transfer data at unprecedented
speeds, scientists from Caltech and the University of Victoria have
achieved a sustained data transfer rate between computers of 186Gbps,
across a standard, commercially available fibre optic line. Real world
applications for such speeds already exist, with many scientific
projects across the world needing to share petabytes of data with other
institutions.
The team of researchers consisted of scientists from
various fields, including high-energy physics, computer science, and
engineering. The 186Gbps transfer rate (98Gbps in one direction, 88Gbps
in the other) was achieved over a 100Gbps bidirectional fibre optic line
that stretched 217km from the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) convention in
Seattle, to the University of Victoria Computer Centre in Canada.
While
speeds of more than a 100Tbps have been achieved in the past, they have
either been inordinately expensive, or done over specialized networks.
Also, the team from Caltech and the University of Victoria transferred
data from computer to computer, quite different from just a
demonstration of speed
The
Caltech team at SC11 used 13 servers and 40Gbps LAN connections, while
University of Victoria team used 10 servers and 10Gbps LAN connections
to achieve the two computer-to-computer data transfer rate records,
which were sustained for 11 hours each.
The first record, the
186Gbps data transfer rate (~23.25GBps) was achieved in a
memory-to-memory transfer, while the second, 60Gbps (~7.5GBps) was
achieved in a disk-to-disk transfer.
Refer to the Caltech SuperComputing 2011
site for more details about the equipment used in the record-breaking attempt, as well as the Caltech
press release. Also, check out the rather excitedly narrated video below, demonstrating the team’s efforts:
http://jagathm93.itechgenie.com