Session: CERN

David Foster of CERN
A Brief Tour of Grid Computing for the LHC.
Particle Accelerator

1/8th of the tunnel was already the largest superconductor ever.
1.9 Kelvin
15 PetaBytes of new data each year (that's what's stored, but it produces a PB/second)

Tier 1: (CERN) data acquisition, initial processing, and distribution
Tier 2: (Distributed World-wide) data heavy analysis. Managed mass storage.
Tier 3: Simulation and End-user analysis - batch and interactive

Any Tier 2 may access data at any Tier 1.

Middleware: Security, data management, job management, information system

EGI: European Grid Initiative. www.eu-egi.org

The accelerator is constructed, but still needs to be proved. Two sections have been cooled, with the remaining six to go. CERN is the largest consumer of liquid hydrogen in Europe. Each magnet is 10 meters in length and weighs 30 tons, they expand/contract so the connections are tricky. After multiple cooling/warming cycles, the fingers connecting the magnets got bent, causing a multi-year delay. The plan is to cool it once and leave it cold.

The target to open is this year. April 6th is the last day for the public to go to the tunnel because after that it will be radioactive. There's a press event later in the year (September?). The reality is they will be delighted if it ever works.

Cost so far: 10-15 billion Euro.

Can run about 100 days a year, the rest of the time it's in maintenance. Have robots to go into the radioactive tunnels and do work. Although the radiation dissipates to a point where people can go in on occasion.

The energy in the bean is equivalent to 100kg of TNT. And since it's in a very small space, it can drill a hole through anything imaginable. So the energy of the beam needs to be distributed over the target.

600 million proton collisions per second.

100 meters underground.

We had time at the end, so a discussion regarding the beginnings of the Internet was sparked. The funny part? It was originally for academic and research, if you put anything commercial on there, "You were shot."