Arizona boffins get a grip on their newly-fat pipe

Genetics boffinry IT chiefs in Arizona are overjoyed today to unveil their new and incredibly fat pipe, which will be used to transmit staggeringly enormous amounts of scientific data from the labs where it's generated to the supercomputer where it's processed. The new link runs from the Translational Genomics Research …

[Jeroen Braamhaar]

Brilliant!

Thius piece absoutely made my day - I read it about half an hour ago and I *still* can't stop laughing. Awesome way to report otherwise drearily dry news!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Megawrist barrier?

Is that a contraceptive device, or something involving entirely too much information?

Paris, she knows about wrists.....

[Anonymous Coward]

"It seems that the Canadian consulate in Phoenix lent a hand with the project."

Did you add that right at the end to check if we all read that far?

Or has it some other dark meaning?

Or is a coded message to the resistance?

[Charlie Clark]

New Unit of Measurement

The PornFlick? - data transferred per second? Like it.

[dervheid]

The "Kilowrist Barrier"

LMHO

Brilliant.

Profanisaurus contender, beyond doubt.

[Anonymous Coward]

the kilowrist barrier

Awesome. Just awesome.

I laughed so hard I pooped.

You owe me some new pants!

AC, due to the dirty accident! ;)

[blackworx]

Snigger

That is all

[Paul Murphy]

So when can I sign up for this new service?

Sounds pretty good so far.

Though I would like it in terms of how many PH videos I could watch simultaneously, say 250 screens at once...

ttfn

PH - 'cos she knows what to do with a fat pipe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Incredibly fat pipe.

Are you sure it's not a "tube"?

[Anonymous Coward]

but...

why didn't they just situate the labs and the analysis computer closer together?

[Neil]

Erecting new networks

All p*rn references aside.. 18,000 Megabit/second is about 18 Gb/sec

Isn't the industry rolling out 40G systems today and looking at 100+ G systems shortly? Whats so surprising about 18G?

[The Dark Lord]

"Kilowrist"

Kill-O-Wrist definitely sounds like something Douglas Adams would have come up with.

[Graham Jordan]

4 days without sleep.

So in my more youthful days what I'd call a Thursday night, "Sorry I can't come into work" Friday and the weekend.

If only they had HD smut back then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice fat pipe but....

Bandwidth throttling is on and between 6am and 5am you only get 1mb/sec

[Anonymous Coward]

@but...

A supercomputer can be used for more than gene sequencing. I imagine they weren't originally going to be intertwined, but decided it'd be a good idea. Tbh, I could do with some kilowrist action, my Zen is slow as anything at the moment. :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Snurk, Snurk

Thanks for making my morning. Any idea when I can get that four days worth of video?

[Chris Hills]

Unimpressed

18Gb/s is pathetic by today's standards. Even 5 years ago it was possible to tx/rx at up to 32x 40Gb/s (1,280Gb/s) on a single pair with dwdm.

[Ed Blackshaw]

Forget kilo-wrists

We must act now to ensure that this technology is never used for tera-wrist purposes!

[Joe K]

/obvious

Yeah, i'm gonna need the name of that hi-def 4 day long grumble flick, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

8mph?

If it takes an hour to transmit the data 8 miles, wouldn't it still be quicker to put the hard drives in a truck and drive the information there?

[James Hughes]

@Ed

Quality....

[Robert Grant]

2MB a song?

Pretty poor quality songs, isn't it more like 7.5 million?

[J]

Untitled

"'Dark fibre' equivalent to 700 HD smut channels"

But equiv. to how many NON-smut HD channels? Oh, silly question... who watches those anyway?

Truck? A Mini Cooper would be enough to carry the data, really...

[Dennis]

2mb a song...

just very short songs.

10gig sdh * 32 channels on a single dwdm has been commonplace for 5 or 6 years now.

40g is developed but not really sold.

Alot of the research $$$ has gone into getting adaptive optics to work - getting lamda configurable line cards.

alot of the carrier $$$ has gone on making better use of what they've got.

maybe the headline should have been "new optical network deployed, first for 2008".

mines the one with MOR hanging out of the pocket when I left that industry.

[James O'Brien]

"the magical "kilowrist barrier"" and @2MB a song?

Heh that reminded me of a scene in Super Troopers where the guy is using the speed gun to see how fast he can wank it. Nice Job

On the 2MB a song one

Remember this is all on an iPod so figure all of the songs were bought there then 2MB a song is probably right.

[That's IT]

Looks like one of the resident commenters...

...really makes sense. Alive'n'kicking. The same Sense of Huma[ou]r/Corporate thinking? Thanks, Port 452 [in rev],

[Anonymous Coward]

@Erecting new networks

"Isn't the industry rolling out 40G systems today ...."

Yeah, the company I work for can do you up to 86 x 40Gbits/sec channels on a single fibre pair using off-the-shelf DWDM kit - nothing special, just pick the bits you want from the nice shiney brochure.

[Anonymous Coward]

New ElReg SI unit?

>"A typical piece of boffinry will result in 7 terabytes of info. "

So, one PoB is seven terabytes? But how long would the lorry take to get there if it travelled at the speed of a sheep in a vacuum?

[Andrew Barr]

Obsidian Strategics Incorporated contract small print

USAGE CAPS

Broadband

Please note the speed of th BIG FAT PIPE is "up to" 18,000 Megabit/s so you might not necessarily get that speed..

If you subscribe to the BIG FAT PIPE, this is a capped service, and is based on the amount of data that you download or upload via your BIG FAT PIPE access each month ("Usage Cap"), your usage must not exceed that Usage Cap each month. The current Usage cap for the BIG FAT PIPE is 100TB,

If you exceed your Usage Cap, your download speed will be reduced to 256Kbit/s for the rest of the month.

If, in subsequent months, your usage continues to exceed your Usage Cap, we will continue to contact you to ask you to reduce your usage immediately or you account will be terminated.

[cashew]

"LOL"

Nice article - kind of reminds me why I like to get my tech news with the reg touch.

It did kind of lose its edge when I tried to explain why I was laughing to my wife though...

[Charles Manning]

Of course you need a truck

This is Arizona where you need a minimum of an F250 to take yourself + lunch to work.

7 TB is about the size of lunch, therefore you'll probably still need the truck.

[Nick]

I want...

I want a Smut Hose. All I've got currently is a filth straw.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kilowrist barrier

Ah yes, another classic from Lewis, keep it up (fnarr, fnarr)

[Bounty]

it would take forever.

I've looked into it, and I'm pretty sure that sheep don't move in a vacuum, at least not very far. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't make it the 507 Kilo inches (Ki)

[Ed]

I wonder

Just how much dark fibre there is sitting about the place.....