Submarine connections with Sardinia: the TeRABIT project enters full swing

The TeRABIT project enters the executive phase for the network component with the exclusive use acquisition of a portion of Sparkle's BlueMed submarine cable. This will extend GARR-T, the new generation GARR network, to Sardinia, thus connecting it to the rest of the R&E network across Italy.

The TeRABIT project, funded by the NRRP with INFN and OGS as proposers and CINECA and GARR as partners, is building a digital research infrastructure integrating a high-performance network with HPC resources and distributed computing to make it available to the entire scientific community.

Thanks to the current acquisition and use of cutting-edge technologies, it will be possible to exploit the optical spectrum of the BlueMed submarine cable system. This means that within the fibre there will be multiple lanes, managed by GARR, exclusively dedicated to research data traffic. This innovation represents the first step towards realizing the dual super-fast fibre optic connection in Sardinia, which will ensure, to the world of research and university, not only rapid data transmission but also greater redundancy and reliability extending globally.

From the technological point of view, this is a result so far unique in the national panorama, as explained by Massimo Carboni, Chief Technical Officer of GARR: “Thanks to the open cable technology, which gives operators the possibility to freely manage a range of spectrum rather than single signals, this new virtual fibre bridge will create a seamless integration between GARR-T optical infrastructure in Italian mainland and the one in the Sardinia insula. This acquisition is the first step of GARR-T expansion, which will be completed by 2025 and will provide up-to-400-Gbps connectivity all over the Italian territory", says GARR CTO Massimo Carboni.

"We are proud to present this first concrete result today," commented Mauro Campanella, scientific coordinator of the TeRABIT project. "We are building a comprehensive infrastructure, perfectly harmonised with other ongoing interventions funded by the PNRR. Once operational, the new connection will bring Sardinia's infrastructures and researchers closer to TeRABIT's HPC computing systems and ICSC resources, the National Research Center in HPC, Big Data, and Quantum Computing being installed nationwide."

The new network connection will support the requirements of numerous research infrastructures and laboratories in Sardinia and strengthen the candidacy of the Sos Enattos area to host the Einstein Telescope, the future infrastructure in Europe dedicated to gravitational waves, a third-generation detector 10 times more sensitive than those currently existing.

Once the expansion is complete, the GARR-T network will see an increase of 5,000 km of fibre optic, reaching a total capacity of about 40 Tbps throughout Italy.