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!

[nairb774]

So it handles 4*10^12 bits a second. And there are 40*10^6 collisions a second. So (4*10^12*bits*s^-1)/(40*10^6*collisions*s^-1)=100, 000 bits per collision. Comparitivly to a regular digital camera this is nothing but then again it is processing so much information per second. I wonder how this compares to STAR at RHIC at Brookhaven National Labs. I did research into the Rho-Muon at STAR last school year. intresting to see the advancements in computing technology.

nairb774

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.

Re:The Whoda Whata

[Xzzy]

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

IANAPhysicist, but I work in proximity to them. So I know a little bit about this stuff.

RCT = A device that detects a particle after a collision happens in a particle accelerator, which "triggers" to the connected computer that something interesting happened.
CMS = Name of the experiment. Like NASA is the name of an organization.
LHC = A big particle collider being built at CERN, in Switzerland. Like Fermilab, but bigger.

Physicists are smart folk, but are hideous at PR. Most of the web pages intended to be a PR front fail miserably, and are indecipherable to anyone except physicists. There was even a movement a few years back to get physicsts to name their experiments in more public-friendly ways, which failed miserably.

Re:The Whoda Whata

[Prendeghast]

I did my experimental particle physics PhD on an experiment named BaBar, you know, like the elephant. Are you telling me that isn't public-friendly?

A similar experiment based in Japan is called Belle and one in upstate NY called CLEO. One of the other experiments at the LHC is called ATLAS. They all seem reasonably public-friendly names (but then I am one of the folks you are saying don't know what a public-freindly name is, so I suppose my views are irrelevant).

As to the PR, it's pretty hard to make particle physics accessible to other physicists, let alone the general public. The essence of the question that BaBar and Belle were trying to answer is "Is CP violated in strong interactions?". It generally takes several years of university physics just to understand the question. The most "successful" PR projects never even seem to get to the crux of the project.

Incidentally, the answer is "yes, maximally". Your tax dollars at work!

Re:The Whoda Whata

[jmtpi]

I'm a current BaBarian, so let me try to fix this up a bit....

The essence of the question that BaBar and Belle were trying to answer is "Is CP violated in strong interactions?".

Not quite. We are investigating CP violation in the weak interaction. CP is conserved in the strong interaction.

It generally takes several years of university physics just to understand the question.

I hope not. In one paragraph: There is matter and there is antimatter. Astronomers tell us that the universe is completely made of matter. Particle physicists have a very well tested theory (The Standard Model) predicting how matter and antimatter behave. Using this theory, we predict that there should have been about the same amount of antimatter as matter made in the Big Bang, leading to a whole lot of nothing (i.e. we wouldn't exist). This is a bad contradiction, so we want to see whether the Standard Model's predictions about differences between matter and antimatter (CP violation) hold up.

Incidentally, the answer is "yes, maximally".

Although C and P individually are maximally violated by the weak interaction, the combination CP is nearly conserved. And the CP violation we measure at BaBar and Belle is exactly what is predicted by The Standard Model (i.e. not enough to explain the matter-dominated universe). So we continue to search for new sources of CP violation, because something doesn't add up.

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

cheesy article

[Anonymous Coward]

Particle physicists have been building logic into triggers for 35 or 40 years. As a point of reference the first Nobel out of the AGS at BNL was in the 60's and triggering in the chambers is what made it happen. This is no more radical and innovative than AMD introducing the Opteron was for the processor industry. Sure it's neat, sure it's state of the art, sure it's challenging. It's not radical, nor stunningly innovative and it's not a freakin' camera. Look at the article -- it's a glorified press release from Madison .

It took 6 years

[iamhassi]

"It took 6 years..."

so it runs pentium 2s?

How about some more hardware details?

[theGreater]

http://www.hep.wisc.edu/cms/trig/welcome-trigger.h tml

-theGreater.

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.

WTF?

[Retric]

I just hope it can do math...

"all that energy is compressed into two protons, which are a million times smaller than that annoying bug[Mosquito].

Hmm, (2/(6.02*10^23grams))/(0.002grams) = 1.66112957 × 10-21 so 2 protons weigh about 1 / (1,700,000,000,000,000,000,000)th as much as those Mosquito's which means it's volume is around that much smaller as well.

How about length 15 mm vs (10^15 meters) = 1.5 × 10^ -17meters so umm nope.

Re:WTF?

[pinopino]

Your calculation is only correct if the bug is the same density as thee mosquito. Fortunately, matter made up of atoms is mostly empty space. Atom size is roughly an Angstrom (10^-10 m), proton size is roughly a Fermi (10^-15 m), so volume (and hence density, since electrons are light) difference is about (10^5)^3 or 10^15, fixing your factor, roughly. Really what is meant by 'area' of the proton is the center of mass cross-section for the proton-proton collision.
A mosquito with nuclear density would be a heavy bug indeed. And yes, IAAPhysicist.

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

[the_brobdingnagian]

The article talks about energy not mass. I think they mean with the kinetic energy of 14 mosquitoes. I dont know the speed of the protons colliding, but with special relativistic effects in your calculations a factor of two times as much energy seems a bit low. The mass of a particle increases with its velocity. You wont notice it untill you get close to c, but these protons get close to c. The only particles I can think of who have more kinetic energy are some cosmic ray particles. Take it from me when I say the LHC can accellerate particles with huge amount of kinetic energy.

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?

Oh dear!

[scdeimos]

At around $20,000 a board, I really hope that one being held in TFA's photo was dead already.

Super Bowl Reviews

[wardk]

I suspect the Seahawks get an extra touchdown, and the Steelers lose a touchdown if this was in place last sunday.

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.

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

[deglr6328]

well...some people do. :D You can easily make the live feed of CDF and D0 from fermilab's tevatron into a simple screensaver. In fact, I rather like mine. :) Sometimes they shut down the feed and just keep cycling the last few frames but that's ok.

Could have been in America

[SethJohnson]

While this camera was developed at the university of Wisconsin, it will be installed at a facility in Geneva, Switzerland.

We had the opportunity to deploy this in America.

The Super Conducting Supercollider project in Waxahachie, TX was a federal basic science research project that lost its funding and was dismantled in 1993. The tunnel was dug. All the technological hurdles seemed to be jumpable. But the American people were less than interested in funding stuff that wasn't directly translatable into tastier hamburgers or cooler cars. The Democrat-led congress cancelled the $2 billion budget and America resigned itself to let other countries lead in this field.

I only mention the 'democrat-led' congress because I do not believe they have earned the slurr of 'tax-and-spend-liberals'. This is one example why.

Re:Could have been in America

[OverkillTASF]

Interestingly, one of the biggest unforeseen hurdles for this project was the fire ants....

If you live in Texas, you know why.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Damn

[eno2001]

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

eXtremely Fast Tracker at Fermilab

[The_Wilschon]

I'm currently working on a similar project at Fermilab. The eXtremely Fast Tracker (XFT) is a set of electronics which decides, once every 396 nanoseconds, whether or not the particle tracks that we see represent an interesting event that we want to keep, or a boring one that we don't want to bother putting on disk (well, actually tape). We are in the process of upgrading it, because the collision rate has been increasing (technically, the luminosity has been increasing), and the old XFT is not up to handling the now much higher track density. My job is writing software to test the system as it is installed.

Some basics on experimental particle physics

[arthas]

Well, I am a physicist and here is some additional information (hopefully not bad PR):

LHC is the biggest and most powerful particle collider ever built. It is a proton-proton collider that collides proton beams together with 14 TeV (tera electronvolts) center-of-mass energy (if memory serves).

CMS (= compact muon solenoid) is actually quite big detector. Its main purpose is to find the so called Higgs boson. The existense of the Higgs boson is required by the Standard Model of particle physics (one good book on the basics of particle physics (for people who already understand quite a bit of physics and math) is: Francis Halzen, Alan D. Martin: Quarks and Leptons: An Introductory Course in Modern Particle Physics). CMS, as most other particle physics experiments has an onion-like structure. The innermost layer is called a tracker which is used to (surprise, surprise) find the tracks of the particles produced in the collision. There is also a magnetic field in the tracker so the curvature of the particle tracks can be used to determine their momenta. The next layers are called electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters. These are used to measure the energies of the particles. And finally there are the muon chambers that are used to detect the muons (muon is like an electron but only heavier).

There are also other big detectors in the LHC experiment like e.g. ATLAS.

One good source of information on particle physics are CERN summer student lectures available in Real-media format.

Re:Some basics on experimental particle physics

[Xzzy]

(hopefully not bad PR):

You did fine. ;)

CMS (= compact muon solenoid) is actually quite big detector. Its main purpose is to find the so called Higgs boson.

See, that's the sort of thing I was talking about. The CMS home page doesn't describe this at ALL. It has a FAQ page.. which promptly goes into details about the construction of the detector and how big it is without ever explaining why the thing is being built. A wikipedia link at the bottom eventually explains it all, but this is a rarity in my experience. It's written for physicists, by physicists.

Part of the problem I have as a non-physicist is that whenever I have to tell someone where I work, they immediatley want to know what the laboratory does, and why. It's difficult to explain the experiments when all you know is that they're building the biggest magnet ever.

Eventually my explanations fail to satisfy, and 9 times of 10 the conversation ends with someone asking "and my taxes are paying for that??" Public interest in theoretical research labs is already pretty damn low, and near as I can see a lack of explanation in layman's terms only hurts it further. Most folks are willing to accept that some types of study may never result in something they can buy at the store, but I also think they'd appreciate having a way to understand why it's important anyways.

Re:Some basics on experimental particle physics

[arthas]

You did fine. ;)

I'm glad I was able to explain at least something clearly. Maybe there is hope for me yet...

It indeed seems that the CMS home page is written for physicists or physics students. It basically tells nothing a non-physicist or non-engineer would like to know. This is quite sad.

The CERN public pages seem to be more newbie-friendly.

The purpose of these experiments and the importance of the results to our understanding of the universe is indeed important to explain... Not only because it might be good for also non-physicists to know something about these things but also because (if told correctly) it is a very intriguing and nice story, that is, very good PR! We foolish physicists are wasting an excellent tool that could be used to increase the public awareness and interest in basic research. And naturally the politicians making decisions about funding are mostly non-physicists too...

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.

And another part of the CMS/LHC project at UW

[daveschroeder]

200TB of Xserve RAID storage (link includes pictures)

Text of the article:

The University of Wisconsin - Madison has deployed 35 5.6TB Xserve RAID storage arrays in a single research installation as part of an ongoing scientific computing initiative.

The Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), a partnership between several research departments at the University of Wisconsin, have installed almost 200TB, or 200,000GB, of Xserve RAID arrays.

As a comparison, 200TB of storage is enough to hold 2.75 years of high definition video, 25,000 full length DVD movies, 323,000 CDs, 20 printed collections of the Library of Congress, or over 1000 Wikipedias.

The GLOW storage installation is physically split between the departments of Computer Sciences and High Energy Physics. Each Xserve RAID is attached to a dedicated Linux node running Fedora Core via an Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card and is either directly accessed via various mechanisms, such as over the network via gigabit ethernet, or aggregated using tools such as dCache.

The storage is primarily used to act as a holding area for large amounts of data from experiments such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

500 gigs per second

[Stoutlimb]

WOW that's 500 gigs per second. I wonder if they process it on the fly and delete it, or if it's stored somehow. I doubt they use serial ATA. How do you even search or make meaningful information out of a data set that large?