The World's Fastest Image Processor

Roland Piquepaille writes "This image processor is not your typical digital camera. It took 6 years, 20 people, and $6 million to build the 'Regional Calorimeter Trigger' (RCT) which will be a component of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, one of the detectors on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The RCT will fill several racks of space in order to process 4 trillion bits of information per second while analyzing a billion proton collisions per second. The camera is currently being tested at the University of Wisconsin at Madison before being shipped to Geneva in June to participate in the first experiments in 2007."

Comments

okay, so it takes great pictures!

[yagu]

What about the call quality?, and text-messaging? And what is the area coverage? What kinds of plans are available?

Does it play mp3s?

Can I take videos with it and send to my friends?

Re:okay, so it takes great pictures!

[RManning]

Does it play mp3s?

If it doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, I don't want it!

The Whoda Whata

[cdrudge]

...to build the 'Regional Calorimeter Trigger' (RCT) which will be a component of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, one of the detectors on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland

Ah, the RCT for the CMS on the LHC in CH. Why didn't you just say that.

I still have no idea what a RCT, CMS, or LHC really are and I RTFA.

Ten years later...

[hotarugari]

Now everyone can take the very same "pictures" using their computers at home as long as they have double the 5 terabytes of ram needed to run Windows 2k15.

obligatory comments

[slackaddict]

man, imagine a cluster of these.. er, actually, imagine the pr0n you could create!!! w00t! seriously, they could recover the cost of their r&d by using this to post some super high-quality shots of paris hilton! :-)

Re:obligatory comments

[maxume]

Whoa! You can actually see the individual diseases!

20 people to develop

[Anonymous Coward]

something that can tell if the guy in the picture has a hard... oh, it said hadron..nm

designed and tested in mad town, eh?

[swschrad]

the liquid cooled sensors will, no doubt, be cooled in beer, then.

It took 6 years

[iamhassi]

"It took 6 years..."

so it runs pentium 2s?

This is not the case in glorious Nippon!

[Y-Crate]

I'm sure you'll be able to find it integrated into a cell phone and on the racks of Akihabra in about 6 months, where it will then be end-of-lifed in about a week, and replaced with a better model.

Say Bye Bye Little Blue Planet

[Baldrson]

The Higgs-Boson "is one of the last particles we need to complete the standard model of physics," says Klabbers of the well-established model physicists use to explain the behaviors and properties of the smallest units of matter. Scientists have been seeking definitive evidence of the Higgs-Boson for 20 years.

Discovering the mass of the Higgs-Boson will, of course, shrink the Earth to the size of a pea, which is the fate of most type 13 planets.

not so great

[poot_rootbeer]

What they don't tell you is that because it's based on ImageMagick, it will still barf on certain malformed JFIF header blocks.

Everyone say "cheese"!

[Ithika]

It won't stop the top of someone's head from being outside the shot though. Or the other one, the "pot-plant on head" effect.

If this is the Compact Muon Experiment

[Flying pig]

How big is the SUV version going to be? There won't be enough room in Switzerland for it.

Testing at UW/Madison?

[argStyopa]

You *know* that the first picture is going to be some grad student's ass.

Re:Testing at UW/Madison?

[alta]

What they don't tell you is that the zoom level is fixed at 10000000000000x, so it'll actually be an ass particle.

They may even get a few asses to collied together and take a pic of whatever that is. It'll be like 1 trillian bits of assyness, but asses move so slow compared to how this thing is designed, that each picture will be identical.

oh well.

a billion protons

[trb]

So I read the slashdot lead, and it says it analyzes a billion proton collisions per second. So I thought, how much stuff is that? I rtfa and it says:

In the LHC, each pair of colliding protons flying around the collider crashes with the energy of about 14 buzzing mosquitoes -- but all that energy is compressed into two protons, which are a million times smaller than that annoying bug.

So we know that a proton is a million times smaller than a mosquito (or half a mosquito?). So a billion protons is equivalent to, uh, a thousand mosquitos. I tried: http://www.google.com/search?q=1000+mosquitos+to+g rams to no avail. Foo on Google calculator. But google search points at pages that mostly claim that a mosquito weighs 2mg or so, so a billion protons (1E9) should weigh 2 grams.

But I thought that a mole of protons (6E23 protons) weighed 1 gram. So common knowledge and this article are off by several (14?) orders of magnitude. Hmmm. Or are they the same size but very different in mass?

Or when the author said "a million times smaller," maybe she/he intended "a jillion times smaller."

Re:a billion protons

[Anonymous Coward]

with the energy of about 14 buzzing mosquitoes -- but all that energy is compressed into two protons, which are a million times smaller than that annoying bug.

"The power resulting from these collisions is 11,000 watts,"

A buzzing mosquito should therefore be about 780W! I need to harness a few of this to power my car. Who needs horsepower (735W) when mosquitopower are more powerful.

Re:a billion protons

[HorsePunchKid]

Could I get that in Libraries of Congress per fortnight?

Yes. Yes, you can. Four terabits per second is about 1.2 exabits per fortnight. There are about 10 terabytes, or 80 terabits in the Library of Congress. So do the math, and you get about 16,000 LoC/ftnt.

Anyone else remember the thread in which the thrust generated by the space shuttle's rocket boosters was measured in (burning) Libraries of Congress?

Don't forget the "anti-red-eye" feature!

[The_REAL_DZA]

Nobody wants to put up a picture of a hundred billion proton collisions with glowing red eyes with their screen saver.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Damn

[eno2001]

I bet that thing would really make Halo feel realistic... ;P

My words of wisdom

[Mister Gates]

I feel good about this. No one will ever need more than 4 trillion bits of information per second.

Barrel of monkeys

[AlpineR]

Could I get that in Libraries of Congress per fortnight?

In addition to Libraries of Congress, I want to see barrels of monkeys become a standard measurement. Sort of the emotional axis orthogonal to the Libraries of Congress axis in information-space.

• A game of Settlers of Catan = 0.8 barrels of monkeys
• Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit = 1.5 barrels of monkeys
• Cleaning the house = -2.7 barrels of monkeys

AlpineR

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Indeed

[triso]

In grade 11 physics we were discussing hadrons and other subatomic particles when the shyest and geekiest girl asks, "How big are these hard-on thingies?" Order was not restored and the class was dismissed a few minutes early.

Think of the porn oppertunities!

[scottinflorida]

Heck, we could put these things in Japanese schoolgirl's bathrooms and make a friggin' fortune!