Fastest Gun in the West By Raven Hanna SLAC partnered with
CalTech, Fermilab, CERN and the University of Florida, along
with groups from the UK, Brazil and Korea to defend its title as
one of the fastest guns in the West—or, more accurately, the
largest bandwidth, which is the computing equivalent. Shown left
to right: Les Cottrell (SCS), Michael Chen (Chelsio) and Gary
Buhrmaster (SCS) display their Bandwidth Challenge certificates
at SC2004. (Photo courtesy of Les Cottrell) In the
Supercomputing 2004 Bandwidth Challenge contest, the team set a
new world record for sustained bandwidth of 101 gigabits per
second (Gbps). This was equivalent to downloading three DVD
movies per second and was four times faster than the record of
23 Gbps that SLAC team set at Supercomputing 2003. Using roughly
$400K of cutting-edge equipment loaned from companies, the SLAC
team designed their part of the network before the
Supercomputing 2004 convention and then set it up upon arrival
in Pittsburgh, PA. "The award in our case was