32

A Low Cost, High Capacity Storage Module for Data Grids in Particle Physics--Tempest Microsystems, 2223 Avenida de la Playa, #110, La Jolla, CA  92037; 858-456-3800

Mr. Michael Mojaver, Principal Investigator, mm@tempestinc.com 

Ms. Julie Lundington, Business Official, jl@tempestinc.com 

DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-01ER83315

Amount:  $680,000

Modern high-rate, high-energy physics experiments require fast, petabyte scale storage as a key requirement for fast computation and data analysis in a distributed data grid environment.  However, existing high-speed commercial solutions do not cost-effectively scale to the petabyte storage range.  This project will apply low-cost, commodity magnetic disk drive technology to develop a portable, fifty terabyte module, scalable to a petabyte at a cost comparable to the robotic tape libraries in use today.  In Phase I, a fully functional prototype with a capacity of two terabytes was constructed and the feasibility of the basic approach was demonstrated.  Phase II will result in a production-ready module with a storage capacity of 20-50 terabytes.  A 100 terabyte system based on the technology also will  be demonstrated.

Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee:  The technology should be viable as a short term backup solution in enterprise applications and can be applied to time critical environments where access to very large medical imaging or map databases is required.