LHC Computing Grid

The LHC Computing Grid, launched on October 3, 2008 [ [http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/lhcgridfest/ LHC GridFest] ] , is a distribution network designed by CERN to handle the massive amounts of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It incorporates both private
fiber optic cable links and existing high-speed portions of the public Internet.

The data stream from the detectors provides approximately 300 GB/s, which is filtered for "interesting events", resulting in a "raw data" stream of about 300 MB/s. The CERN computer center, considered "Tier 0" of the LHC Computing Grid, has a dedicated 10 Gb/s connection to the counting room. [http://gridcafe.web.cern.ch/gridcafe/animations/LHCdata/LHCdata.html final-draft-4-key ] ]

The project is expected to generate 27 TB of raw data per day, plus 10 TB of "event summary data", which represents the output of calculations done by the CPU farm at the CERN data center. This data is sent out from CERN to eleven Tier 1 academic institutions in Europe, Asia, and North America, via dedicated 10 Gb/s links. More than 150 Tier 2 institutions are connected to the Tier 1 institutions by general-purpose national research and education networks. The data produced by the LHC on all of its distributed computing grid is expected to add up to 10-15 petabytes of data each year. [ [http://www.techworld.com/mobility/features/index.cfm?featureid=4074&pn=2 Techworld.com - Parallel Internet: Inside the Worldwide LHC computing Grid ] ]

The Tier 1 institutions receive specific subsets of the raw data, for which they serve as a backup repository for CERN. They also perform reprocessing when recalibration is necessary. The primary configuration for the computers used in the grid is based on Scientific Linux.

Distributed computing resources for analysis by end-user physicists are provided by the Open Science Grid, Enabling Grids for E-sciencE, and LHC@home projects.

References

External links

* [http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG/ Official webpage] The World Wide LHC Computer Grid