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"Evolution of the Internet" Powers Massive LHC Grid
jbrodkin brings us a story about the development of the computer network supporting CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which will begin smashing particles into one another later this year. We've discussed some of the impressive capabilities of this network in the past.
"Data will be gathered from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which hosts the collider in France and Switzerland, and distributed to thousands of scientists throughout the world. One writer described the grid as a 'parallel Internet.' Ruth Pordes, executive director of the Open Science Grid, which oversees the US infrastructure for the LHC network, describes it as an 'evolution of the Internet.' New fiber-optic cables with special protocols will be used to move data from CERN to 11 Tier-1 sites around the globe, which in turn use standard Internet technologies to transfer the data to more than 150 Tier-2 centers. Worldwide, the LHC computing grid will be comprised of about 20,000 servers, primarily running the Linux operating system. Scientists at Tier-2 sites can access these servers remotely when running complex experiments based on LHC data, Pordes says. If scientists need a million CPU hours to run an experiment overnight, the distributed nature of the grid allows them to access that computing power from any part of the worldwide network"
I mean, if even the supporting computer network is smashing particles into each other it's got to be 133+!
How many Skynet jokes can it generate on demand?
Hmmm... Just wait till this gets turned into a botnet... Oh, wait, it runs Linux. I guess we're safe.
Dickwad. Mod parent down
warning: this is a "*.notlong.com" link... DO NOT CLICK.
Sad thing is, CERN would probably win.
I suppose this will all be raw sensor data from the LHC itself, right? Must be a bitch to get anything meaningfull out of it.
Is the birth of Skynet, and will be the death of us all. (and scratch the ladies in the subject; forgot for a second what site this was...)
788652 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 19 x 1153
You'd think our /. Overlords would gin up a filter to block the posting of google & yahoo redirects.
/.
There's really no reason to use redirects or tinyurl on
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...did it have a "Vista capable" sticker?
...from SCO Germany, trying to get them to buy 20,000 SCOSource licenses.
This is exactly the sort of asshattery I would expect from an organization headed by Ralph Yarro and Darl McBride.
"The LHC collisions will produce 10 to 15 petabytes of data a year"
The collisions will produce much more data, but "only" 15 PB of that will be permanently stored. That's a stack of CDs 20km high. Every. Year.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It won't be a parallel internet until it too is saturated with porn.
(Unless it's like the parallel Goatee Universe in ST:TOS. In which case all the women will be dressed opaquely from head to toe? Or they will all have beards?)
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
It would be the end of the world as we know it.....
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
"...the distributed nature of the grid allows them to access that computing power from any part of the worldwide network..." Should be soon.
Besides the obvious cool factor (I recall back when earning my undergrad how a fellow student was so excited he could compile Firefox in under 10 hours by using a grid he set up in one of the labs) of being able to crunch massive amounts of data very, very quickly, I'm curious what sorts of applications could use this effectively? Will it be limited to strictly scientific research? Can some of those CPU cycles be sold off to for-profit corporations?
Will pixar be able to render their movies overnight now?
-- Kimball
www.kimballlarsen.com
But how well does it play Cyrsis at full settings?
Oh wait ofc it does, youve basically got science which is fundamentally open source.
Then youve got a bunch of scientists who are fundamentally geeks
And its all being setup in Europe, which isnt as under the grip of MS
As a bonus
They need to ability to look back and explain all their analysis which means they have to see the source
It costs a hell of a lot to get the data so they dont want to loose any data anywhere.
They have a lot of results to analyse so they dont want to be waiting for the server to come back on-line.
Could they of gone with BSD? probably, but most science tools are developed for linux.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I clicked, what happens to me?
Will it blend?
So, what have you done today to help make science fiction closer to reality?
I worked on the board layout for my rocket test stand data acquisition system. Sure, it's far removed from a trip to Mars, but you have to start somewhere. I'll bet you can't even say that much.
If you're unwilling to put forth any effort, quit bitching at those who are.
Actually not all of it is offline. One of the things I have a research grant for is to develop a realtime remote farm for monitoring the detector. This is to catch subtle detector problems quickly before we end up collecting 2 weeks of useless data.
For the Tier 1 a significant fraction of the data is raw 'sensor' (we call it detector) data. This allows reconstruction program converts the data into physics objects like electrons, muons, jets etc.) to be rerun on the data once bugs in the initial reconstruction program have been fixed.
At first, I read that as Goatse Universe... *shudders*
Hey, it's one of those good botnets we just heard about!
Perhaps we should give equal time to an alternate post about the Intelligent Design of the Internet.
So, what have you done today to help make science fiction closer to reality?
I work in my spare time on an open source project called factdiv. The idea is to use FACTOR as a problem to learn how to attack complexity itself. Complexity problems underly all the great open questions in science and so if you can solve those, you sorta solve them all.
So far, results haven't been all that great, but, someone will get there. If we do, then we can have computers answer questions, like, how to take 10,000,000 parts and build a spaceship, how to take a model of science and devise experiments to probe its limits, and have it wired up automatically to manufacturing apparatus so that it can pretty much do unattended science 24x7, and then file away the knowledge that will last far more long than a mere human brain can live.
But, I still can only FACTOR about 20 digits numbers and have no good complexity answers, but as you said, you have to start somewhere.
This is my sig.
You know, we're going through all this, and we're still not anywhere near closer to coming up with a machine that does anti-gravity
How do you know this? One possibility is that there are more that 3 space dimensions. If this is the case AND the LHC has enough energy to access them we could well end up being able to study quantum gravity at the LHC. This might not give is flying cars but in order to first utilize something it is neccessary to understand it.
Basically, physics is a total failure, and that's why there's no flying cars or nuclear fusion...
It depends on what you think the goals of physics are. As a physicist myself I would define them as "to understand how the Universe works". While we still have a long way to go physics has by no means been a failure in that regard. We understand far more about how the Universe works than we did 50 or 100 years ago. Whether or not we can produce flying cars or fusion reactors depends on HOW the Universe works. To say that physics is a failure because these things are extremely hard to produce would be like saying that Columbus' expedition was a total failure because he didn't get to India. You cannot complain physics is a failure just because the Universe does not work the way that YOU want it to - we study the laws of physics, we don't get to make them.....although it would be interesting if we could!
Complete with black hole in the centre...now I have to go disinfect my brain.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
What a lot of people don't know is that if you want to join a cluster to the Open Science Grid and you are a legit organization more than likely they would let you join. Just be sure you understand your responsibilities as it's more of an active participation. If you are a school or computer user group/club go to the open science grid website and start reading up.
Warning: Although not for this crowd. Joining OSG (http://www.opensciencegrid.org/) is a bit more complicated than loading up BOINC or folding@home. It requires a stack of middleware that is distributed as part of OSG's software. Most of the sites I believe use Condor (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/). If you would like to get Condor up and running quick the best way is using ROCKS (http://www.rocksclusters.org/wordpress/) with a Rocks Condor "Roll" (jargon for Rocks condor cluster). Then after getting your condor flock up and running you can load the Open Science Grid stuff on it.
I'm currently running a small cluster of PC's that were destined to be excessed (P4's 3 or 4 years old) and have seen jobs come in and process on my computers! And...to boot you can configure BOINC to act as a backfill mechanism so that when the systems are not running jobs from OSG they can be running BOINC and whatever project you've joined through that project.
BTW...all of the software mentioned is funded under grants from the National Science Foundation - primarily via the Office of CyberInfrastructure but some through other Directorates within NSF.
Fair enough, you have to start somewhere. But given your own results, what makes you think the physicists aren't making progress at a reasonable pace?
... turn the Earth into a black hole.
I know you're trying to be funny by mocking Intelligent Design, but why not Intelligent Design? Afterall, there is proof of Unintelligent Design!
Or intelligent design? You decide!
It wasn't very black...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
...the Open Science Grid, which oversees the U.S. infrastructure for the LHC network
Wrong. Caltech oversees the infrastructure for the US LHC network. The OSG provides the middleware and grid operations center for the computing and storage resources in the US that are part of the LHC experiments. The OSG does not manage or oversee communications networks.
What happens if you did click?
Practically speaking, trickle-down technology of the sort mentioned in the article is one of the main reasons basic research on this massive scale even has a chance of getting funded with taxpayer dollars. Looking for the Higgs, supersymmetry, and a color glass condensate is cool (important!) scientifically, but it is hard to justify spending 10 billion dollars without some pragmatic output. I'm a high energy physicist by training and would like to think these projects could get funded on their own scientific merit, but I suspect funding agencies would disagree; regardless, technology offshoots of this sort are definitely a good thing.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
You can't increase the weak. It would then be strong!
Then the less strong will be the new weak. Then you will want THAT increased!
When will you be happy?
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
But, once you get GLaDOS built, don't forget to disable the neurotoxin enitters.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
Well, there is a .SIG size limit --> TinyURL gets around this. Wait a tick, that is my situation exactly -- my TinyURL below links to a slashdot post I made in the past. Couldn't fit it all in without TinyURL.
.SIG size could be increased, with a user-defined setting that determines how big a .SIG each individual wants to see [sice /. only stores one copy per user (not per post) in any case this can't impact /. if the limit is moved to say 500 bytes]. Then the need for TinyURL is removed and such redirects could be filtered. Of course, one could still set up a meta-redirect page on a web site that sent the user to who knows what ultimate destination.
I come here for the love
Sig size mostly. Of course thst can be lifted. They can just ignore the URL size, to a certain degree of course.
WTF is wrong with your stupid ass.. get out there and get to work.. we are waiting!
Fair enough, you have to start somewhere. But given your own results, what makes you think the physicists aren't making progress at a reasonable pace?
The whole post was a joke, and nobody got it.
This is my sig.
The on-site data centres at CERN are actually terrible when it comes to cooling (at least they were when I went there). I was expecting the server rooms to be low-ceilinged rooms with AC units good enough to keep the rooms at least chilly, but they were actually swelteringly hot, and one of them seemed to be in an old warehouse with very high ceilings.
Perhaps, if they had separate limits for visible and invisible characters.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Their Seti@home team is going to be hard to beat :(
...and ISPs are worried about the bandwidth requirements of file sharers ;)
But, once you get GLaDOS built, don't forget to disable the neurotoxin enitters.
That's going to be difficult because of all the complications with the folding nacelles and power couplings...
This is my sig.
Outsourcing has so many benefits: 1) Cost Savings 2) Time Zone Benefits 3) Quick Turn Around Time 4) Standardizing Business Processes and many more.... http://www.outsourcewebsite.com/
They're actually connecting to the fucking internet!?!?!
who gave them their degrees?
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.