FIFA houses 75 supercomputers in UK for World Cup
Plus sticker swapping goes online
FIFA has chosen the town of Slough to drop its supercomputer bomb for the 2010 World Cup, installing a massive data farm to deal with demand.
With a massive increase in demand for online video anticipated, FIFA will install 75 supercomputers on the site to deal with the demand for over two petabytes of data.
By comparison, Avatar consumed only one petabyte of data during the making of the CGI-fuelled 3D extravaganza.
During the FIFA 2010 World Cup, there will be a demand for around 5.5 billion web pages, up from 4.2 billion in 2006, with an average of 70 million per hour during the height of the tournament.
In an average month, FIFA.com attracts approximately 5 million unique users and generates over 80 million page views.
Come bombs, don't fall here for a bit
Matt Stone, Head of New Media at FIFA, said: "Slough was the natural choice for FIFA.com to house its additional bandwidth requirements. The state-of-the-art venue offers security and will ensure rapid delivery of the online experience to fans."
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Included on the site will be elements like news, video highlights, historical data, contact with the players, behind-the-scenes access, and an online community, as well as hosting the online Panini World Cup Sticker album (here at TechRadar, we prefer the official, real thing though).
We've got a boatload of swapsies here (we mean hundreds), so hit us up if you're interested in a bit of nostalgia and are desperate to get rid of Osman Chavez of Honduras...
Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grew with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.