LHC@home

LHC@home is a distributed computing project using the BOINC framework, run by CERN in Switzerland. It is considered an effort to help build the Large Hadron Collider, a CERN project to create a large particle accelerator which became active in September 2008.

A CERN collider project

The project was first introduced as a beta on September 1, 2004 and a record 1000 users signed up within 24 hours. The project went public, with a 5000 user limit, on September 29 to commemorate CERN's 50th anniversary. Currently there is no user limit and qualification.

Project software

The project software involves a program called "SixTrack", created by Frank Schmidt, downloaded via BOINC onto participant computers running Windows or Linux. SixTrack simulates particles accelerating through the 27 km (17 mile)-long LHC to find their orbit stability.
* In one workunit, 60 particles are simulated travelling 100,000 or 1,000,000 loops, which would take about 10 seconds in an actual run.
* The orbit stability data is used to detect if a particle in orbit goes off-course and runs into the tube wall — if this happened too often in actual running, this would cause damage to the accelerator which would need repairs.

ee also

*List of distributed computing projects

External links

* [http://lhcathome.cern.ch/ LHC@home Project Page]
* [http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)]
* [http://frs.web.cern.ch/frs/ SixTrack homepage]