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A Look At CERN's LHC Grid-Computing Architecture
blair1q writes "Using a four-tiered architecture (from CERN's central computer at Tier 0 to individual scientists' desk/lap/palmtops at Tier 3), CERN is distributing LHC data and computations across resources worldwide to achieve aggregate computational power unprecedented in high-energy physics research. As an example, 'researchers can sit at their laptops, write small programs or macros, submit the programs through the AliEn system, find the necessary ALICE data on AliEn servers, then run their jobs' on upper-tier systems. The full grid comprises small computers, supercomputers, computer clusters, and mass-storage data centers. This system allows 1,000 researchers at 130 organizations in 34 countries to crunch the data, which are disgorged at a rate of 1.25 GB per second from the LHC's detectors."
More like "noise crunching", all I can see LHC producing right now is recordings of noise... Now I am not saying there is nothing interesting in that noise but honestly is it worth all that money in trouble to perhaps find some sort of relevant thing in there? One can find any sort of pattern in noise if one really wants to... Doesn't prove anything.