A unique federally funded computing effort is making it easier for corporations to access the largest-scale computers on the planet. Dubbed Teragrid, the effort spans nine different academic and government institutions and has reached a critical mass this year. The numbers are staggering, even for IT managers who are used to big projects. The TeraGrid network currently spans more than 20 petabytes of storage — that’s enough to hold a billion encyclopedias — and more than 280 teraflops of compute power.

You can read more about the Teragrid in my story in today’s Computerworld.com here.