HP, Intel and Yahoo are testing "cloud computing" to the test with help from boffins at the University of Illinois.

For those who came in late, Cloud computing is the concept of sticking software in big data centers as an alternative to running computing applications only on desktops.

HP, Intel and Yahoo said this week they plan to set up a test center on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana. The whole lot is based around an HP system using 200 terabytes of disk space. So far, no one has gotten such an operation to work properly.

This initiative follows a similar one announced by Google and IBM last year involving six other universities.

More here.