One of the world's largest computing grids, capable of streaming the equivalent of three million DVDs a year, was officially launched on Friday.

It will allow 7,000 scientists in 33 countries to process the 15 petabytes of data that will be produced each year at the particle accelerator at the Cern laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland.

Scientists who spent years building the grid and its dedicated 10Gbps connections to 11 key sites--the main universities and laboratories in the network--said high-bandwidth grid computing is transforming the way research is carried out.