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CERN's Particle Smashers List Their Toughest Tech Challenges

Posted by samzenpus on from the this-is-hard dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at CERN have detailed some of the big technology problems they need to solve to help the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) solve some of the fundamental questions about the nature of the universe. 'You make it, we break it' is the CERN openlab motto which looks at emerging tech: data acquisition, computing platforms, data storage architectures, compute management and provisioning and more are on the to do list."

19 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. joke by gurps_npc · · Score: 2

    Left out terrorists sneaking in to steal their anti-matter and threaten the vatican.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    1. Re:joke by Morpf · · Score: 1

      I was constantly shaking my head reading this book.

  2. Re:World Wide Web by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Those would be nothing without the personal computer and mouse, both inventions by Steve Jobs.

  3. Re:Biggest challenge is avoidance. by Morpf · · Score: 1

    Of course a small black hole, it black holes actually exist, would quickly evaporate.

    As we can observe black holes we can be quite sure they exist. ;)

  4. The actual document by kyrsjo · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... not just an article talking about it.
    https://zenodo.org/record/8765...

  5. Re:Biggest challenge is avoidance. by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

    If CERN creates small black holes, so do cosmic ray impacts.

    Also note: The atomic bomb tests didn't knock a hole in the bottom of the oceans and allow them to drain.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  6. Scientific Linux by unixisc · · Score: 1

    'You make it, we break it' is the CERN openlab motto which looks at emerging tech: data acquisition, computing platforms, data storage architectures, compute management and provisioning and more are on the to do list."

    So did CERN make or break Scientific Linux? Why would computing platforms even be a consideration for them, given that along w/ Fermi, they are among the creators of Scientific Linux?

  7. Filling Needs by aprentic · · Score: 2

    I love seeing documents like this.
    A lot of cool stuff gets built because someone has a need for it.
    My current employer (cloudant.com) got started the same way. A couple of LHC researchers couldn't get the data storage throughput levels they needed with existing solutions so they built a new one.
    I'm sure if you look around you can find tons of stuff that comes from papers like this.

  8. Re: World Wide Web by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No, it wasn't. Nor was the rest of the thread.

  9. Non-spammy link, actual document (PDF) by dsinc · · Score: 2

    http://zenodo.org/record/8765/...

  10. CERN Computing Center by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Some numbers about the computing power at the CERN computing center (July 2013):

    Number of machines: 17,000 processors with 85,000 cores (Source)
    All physics computing is done using the Linux operating system and commodity PC hardware. There are few Solaris server machines as well, especially for databases (Oracle).

    1. Re:CERN Computing Center by Existential+Wombat · · Score: 1

      Some numbers about the computing power at the CERN computing center (July 2013):

      Number of machines: 17,000 processors with 85,000 cores (Source)
      All physics computing is done using the Linux operating system and commodity PC hardware. There are few Solaris server machines as well, especially for databases (Oracle).

      And Yes, it can run Crysis.

  11. Re:Biggest challenge is avoidance. by rossdee · · Score: 1

    You can observe the black hole if you are inside the event horizon, however you can't tell anyone about it afterward as your message can't get out

  12. Re:Biggest challenge is avoidance. by mythosaz · · Score: 1

    Meh. You cannot observe anything, ever. At best you can analyze your own neurons firing.

  13. Heard a talk from a CERN physicist by werepants · · Score: 2

    They are collecting an incredible amount of data every instant that this machine is running - they've got extremely capable processing that combs through terabits of data and discards the 99.9% that is irrelevant, so that they merely have to store gigabits to disk (as it is, they have an incredible amount of storage on site). Some pretty impressive computing they have to go through before they even begin to look at the data.

    1. Re:Heard a talk from a CERN physicist by kyrsjo · · Score: 1

      Luckilly most of that is done in the trigger of the experiment, where dedicated hardware solutions filter out a lot. These boards typically sits physically close to the experiment, monitoring a few key subdetectors. When one of a list of pre-programmed conditions occur, they read out all the data from that event, and pass it on to higher levels of sorting. This has to happen very quickly, as there is a new collission every 25 ns, and each of the subdetectors can only hold the data for a few events before it "rolls off the pipeline".

      It's kind of a very very fast spamfilter...

  14. Billions of dollar in the lab by Rinikusu · · Score: 2

    And we still have to drink Sanka.

    --
    If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
  15. "You make it, we break it." by InvalidError · · Score: 1

    The nuclear and elemental particle physicists' message to God.

  16. Re:Biggest challenge is avoidance. by leonardluen · · Score: 1

    i am pretty sure the gravity gets out...