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CERN Launches Huge LHC Computing Grid
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Oct 04, 2008 11:20 AM
from the just-waiting-on-the-actual-LHC-now dept.
from the just-waiting-on-the-actual-LHC-now dept.
RaaVi writes "Yesterday CERN launched the largest computing grid in the world, which is destined to analyze the data coming from the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider. The computing grid consists of more than 140 computer centers from around the world working together to handle the expected 10-15 petabytes of data the LHC will generate each year."
The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid will initially handle data for up to 7,000 scientists around the world. Though the LHC itself is down for some lengthy repairs, an event called GridFest was held yesterday to commemorate the occasion. The LCG will run alongside the LHC@Home volunteer project.
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LHC Offline Until April 2009 (Or Longer) 298 comments
rufey writes "The recent problems at the Large Hadron Collider will now keep it idle until spring 2009. The official press release is here. The LHC went offline due to a suspected failure in a superconducting connection, which overheated and caused around 100 of the LHC's super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100 degrees. This resulted in the accidental release of a ton of liquid helium. The process required to repair the failed superconducting connection involves weeks of warming up the affected area from -456 degrees Fahrenheit to room temperature, and then several more weeks to cool it back down after the repair is made. The total amount of time to do this will spill over into CERN's scheduled winter maintenance/shutdown period, which is partly done to save money on electricity during the period of peak demand."
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Finally... (Score:5, Funny)
We can run Vista *with* Aero
Doomed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Portal to Hell (Score:2)
Not just Pat Robertson, J.D. Frazer also:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20081004 [userfriendly.org]
DOS, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Porn? (Score:5, Funny)
"As the grid is ready but no data is expected to be produced by the LHC for the next few months, engineers have received permission to temporarily fill all 15 petabytes with adult material in an effort to test the infrastructure."
Re:Porn? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
'"As the grid is ready but no data is expected to be produced by the LHC for the next few months, engineers have received permission to temporarily fill all 15 petabytes with adult material in an effort to test the infrastructure."'
The problem, of course, is what to do with all this 'material' when the collider eventually starts producing data. It's now well known that Tim Berners-Lee hurriedly developed the Web within months of the LEP going on line in 1989, which was causing an equally serious storage pro
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I have a much quicker solution: Delete Vista and disable TCPA. Finito! :)
Whee! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
A cloud?
End of the world? Again? (Score:2, Funny)
Great, just Great. Whose idea was it to connect a wormhole machine to sky net?
@Home (Score:1)
Fantastic! (Score:2)
This is Fantastic News! If only the LHC could provide information to actually process data it would be an interesting project. ;) If I find any of the mystery particles on my computer, do I get a free black hole? Cash prizes, as some other distributed computing projects offer, would suck in comparison. Don't like someone? Cash won't always help but a black hole will ruin anyone's day!
I has a (Score:5, Funny)
hadron!
Slac's Crystal Ball Detector - Oracle 10G (Score:2)
SLAC used to use the crystal ball detector for detecting the data and pouring it into an Oracle 10g grid of sun machines, and they'd data mine the data to generate theories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Ball_(detector) [wikipedia.org] I wonder what they call their detector for the LHC, and what database software they use. Also, I'd be curious to know what they use to mine the data, and how they go about it.
Re:Slac's Crystal Ball Detector - Oracle 10G (Score:4, Informative)
I can only really speak for CMS (one of the two big general purpose experiments) but every experiment does similar things. Basically the data is split into smaller datasets based on what we decided was interesting in the event (basically what trigger fired). So we split it into events with electrons, muons, photons, jets (yes events will have multiple of the above but dont worry about how we deal with it). Then each physicist looking for a specific signature (ie a top quark, or in my case high mass e+e- pair) runs their custom homebrew statistical analysis (which use common tools) to pick out the events they are interested in. There are also physicists who run custom designed programs to pick out *any* descrepancy from theory predictions but as they are more general, they arent as senstive as a dedicated analysis on a single channel.
Parent
Re:Why so much? (Score:5, Insightful)
You only see the impact images where something pretty or exciting happened. For each of those, there are several thousands to several billions of ones where nothing happened. Additionally, there are a lot of quantities to be measured which don't show up on pictures of particles doing curlicues in magnetic fields, such as spectroscopy data (at least several megabytes from each of several hundreds of detectors per collision).
Parent
Re:Why so much? (Score:5, Informative)
To you mean those particle trails with "impact image"?
Just think about the resolution of those trails.
Add the 3rd dimension.
And then consider that to build this trail, they need the data of ALL sonsors in the volume, to pick out what belongs to the trail.
And then think about his happening 10 million times per second...
They filter out all but a couple 1000 of them, but this still amounts to a lot of data.
And the higgs boson just doesnt appeast in one single image. It might show up in certain types of cascades, or anomalities in other processes, that only become obvious if a huge statiscal base is evaluated.
Parent
Re:Why so much? (Score:5, Informative)
consider that:
scientists are tracking the paths in which the resultant subatomic particles travel not just to find detectable post-collision phenomena, but they are also looking to see what is missing from those impact images (what their sensors cannot pick up). this will allow scientists to predict strange and interesting new particles that science has yet to discover. but in order to detect what is missing, they have to make sure to record all that is there (or not missing). and that means tracking perhaps tens of billions of particles and their travel path in 3-dimensions at very high resolutions, and at very high sampling rates.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Did you miss the "million" in there?
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, guess I did. Darn that. I'll drink more coffee.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know why they need such a big grid, according to the inquirer they only create about 15 Gigs of data each year.
No, 15 million gigs - now you see! And yes, a full detector read out consists of every non zero channel in the entire detector which comes to about 3 Mb per event and we readout ~200 events/sec. And there are 4 main detectors each doing this. Not even mentioning the processor power to run statistical analysis on these data sets!
Re: (Score:2)
doubt it has a graphics rating above 1.5 so only without aero