Top-Speed ‘Data Highway’ on the Way : Computers: Engineers hope to develop a video and data resource as flexible as the existing long-distance telephone network, but larger.
In the birthplace of the first computer, researchers are helping create its great-grandchild--a top-speed “data highway” crammed with information.
The “Aurora Testbed” is one of five large experiments nationwide to develop a video and data network as flexible as the existing long-distance telephone network, but considerably larger.
Scientists and corporations hope that such work will eventually let people access any information on demand from anywhere.
From the same University of Pennsylvania room where the first computer was built, researchers can send information to a computer in Cambridge, Mass., at a speed of 2.4 gigabits per second. That’s like sending the contents of 100 multivolume encyclopedias in the time it takes to read this sentence.
A gigabit is 1 billion bits, the common unit of storage or memory in a computer. Most computer transmissions occur at 2,400 to 16,600 bits per second.
“A lot of what we see gigabits being good for is not just the raw speed for a single thing, but for getting a more user-friendly interface for everything you do,” said Bruce Davie, one of two Aurora project representatives at Bellcore, the research arm of the regional Bell operating carriers.
“We’ve been pretty much working with drinking straws for a while, and that’s fine if you just want a cup of water,” said Marc Rotenberg, Washington director of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, an industry group. “But if you want a swimming pool, you’ll have to get something wider.”
All five testbeds involve universities, technology companies and millions of dollars from the federal government through the National Science Foundation and the Defense Department.
Each is trying to tackle a different problem of high-speed computing and networking. Three link computers that are far apart, as Aurora does. Two factors enable the testbeds to work: fiber-optic cable that lets information move at gigabit speed, and software that lets computers in different places share memory and tasks.
“Imagine several people trying to work on the same crossword puzzle,” said John Shaffer, a 30-year-old graduate student at Penn. “You all can look at it and try things here and there,” he said. “But as you try things, you can see what everybody else is doing. And if they put in ’27 down,’ it will help you with ’32 across.’ Their results are helping your problem-solving.”
Penn launched the tests May 7 by connecting its computer with one at Bellcore Laboratories in Morristown, N.J. An IBM facility in Hawthorne, N.Y., and a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were later hooked up.
A second large testbed, called “Blanca,” links some government labs, some supercomputer centers, the University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois and University of California.
A third, called “Casa,” pulls together supercomputers at Los Alamos National Lab, California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
Penn researchers are doing their work in the same room where J. Presper Eckert Jr. led the research team that built the room-sized, 30-ton ENIAC, the world’s first fully electronic computer.
Unveiled in 1943, the Electronic Numeric Integrator and Computer was essentially a glorified calculator designed to work out trajectories for long-range weapons.
Fifty years later, the visuals are not as impressive. The Penn end of the Aurora Testbed is a modem and a jumble of electronic devices connected to a desktop computer.
