CENTER FOR COMPUTATION & TECHNOLOGY

The Advocate By Kevin Blanchard LSU official: Fiber-optic network could drive economic growth LAFAYETTE -- Louisiana is poised to become a major hub of technology-driven innovation because of the $40 million Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, one of the network's developers said Tuesday. LONI is an ultra-high-speed fiber-optic network that will connect supercomputers at eight universities across Louisiana. LONI also will connect to a similar, nationwide network called the National LambdaRail that will connect researchers around the world. That inter-connectivity will enable researchers in Louisiana to collaborate with others in ways that haven't been possible before, said Ed Seidel, director of the Center for Computation and Technology at LSU. Seidel was one of several seminar speakers Tuesday at the Tech South Conference in Lafayette. LONI will be available for businesses to collaborate with university researchers, something which has the potential to drive economic development in Louisiana, Seidel said. Companies have expressed interest and LONI should be operational by the end of the summer, Seidel said. While computing power -- how fast processors can "crunch" data -- has doubled every year, networking capability -- how fast computers can share information with other computers -- is doubling even faster, every nine months, Seidel said. If that holds true, networking speeds could one day become effectively "infinite" in speed, which would bring larger supercomputers closer together. The applications of that are endless, including work in astronomy, oil and gas, meteorology, teleconferencing and medicine, Seidel said. Researchers are looking at using that sort of capability, Seidel said. With budget constraints cutting government money for research, the move is to fund large, collaborative projects involving many universities, rather than many smaller projects worked on by individual researchers, Seidel said. Greater consideration is sometimes given to projects involving the private sector, Seidel said. LONI will allow state universities to win this larger pot of grant money. Seidel said many people ask why a faster network is needed when existing networks are not "saturated." The reason, Seidel said, is current bandwidth is so limiting, that many people don't bother to create new applications that would need faster bandwidth. Some of the applications Seidel mentioned as possible for LONI include coastal restoration strategies for the Mississippi River basin, which could attract a large amount of Breaux Act funding from the federal government, and simulations of the oil reservoir to increase drilling productivity. Tuesday was the first day of the second Tech South Information Technology Summit and Exposition at the Cajundome in Lafayette. The conference is geared toward companies along the Gulf Coast.