The GRID project

Summary form only given, as follows. High Energy Physics computing has been confronted for a long time to severe challenges in the domain of data handling, mass storage and processing. Very large amount of data are anticipated for the next generation of experiments to take place starting in 2005. The amount of processing which this data will require will be several orders of magnitude larger than what been experienced so far. In excess of 10 Peta Byte per year (10000 Tera Bytes) will be produced at CERN by the LHC particle accelerator. This will need local storage at CERN and a first massive production processing. Subsequently this data will be distributed world-wide for further processing and analysis. A community of several thousands of scientists will need easy and effective access to most of the data. This is an excellent match to the current development of GRID technology in USA and elsewhere. A large international project named DataGrid has been recently started by CERN and collaborating institutes. This paper describes the current status of the project. (0 refs).