1. Tour of CERN Computer Center
Information Technologies Department
Tour of CERN Computer Center
and the Grid at CERN
Welcome!

2. Computing at CERN IT Department General Purpose Computing Environment
Administrative Computing Services
Physics and engineering computing
Consolidation, coordination and standardization of computing activities
Physics applications (e.g., for data acquisition/offline analysis)
Accelerator design and operations

3. LHC Data every year 40 million collisions per second
After filtering, 100 collisions of interest per second
> 1 Megabyte of data digitised per collision recording rate > 1 Gigabyte / sec
1010 collisions recorded each year stored data > 15 Petabytes / year
1 Megabyte (1MB)
A digital photo
1 Gigabyte (1GB)
= 1000MB
5GB = A DVD movie
1 Terabyte (1TB)
= 1000GB
World annual
book production
1 Petabyte (1PB)
= 1000TB
Annual production of one LHC experiment
1 Exabyte (1EB)
= 1000 PB
3EB = World annual information production
CMS
LHCb
ATLAS
ALICE

4. LHC Data every year LHC data correspond to about
Balloon
(30 Km)
Concorde
(15 Km)
Mt. Blanc
(4.8 Km)
CD stack with
1 year LHC data!
(~ 20 Km)
LHC data correspond to about
20 million CDs each year
Where will the experiments store all of these data?

5. Where will the experiments find such a computing power?
LHC Data Processing
LHC data analysis requires a computing power equivalent to ~ 100,000 of today's fastest PC processors
Where will the experiments find such a computing power?

6. Computing power available at CERN
High-throughput computing based on reliable “commodity” technology
More than 8500 CPUs in about 3500 boxes (Linux)
4 Petabytes on 14’000 drives (NAS Disk storage)
10 Petabytes on 45’000 tape slots with 170 high speed drives
Nowhere near enough!

7. Computing for LHC
Problem: even with Computer Centre upgrade, CERN can provide only a fraction of the necessary resources
Solution: Computing centers, which were isolated in the past, will be connected, uniting the computing resources of particle physicists worldwide
Europe:
267 institutes
4603 users
Ailleurs:
208 institutes
1632 users

8. What is the Grid?
The World Wide Web provides seamless access to information that is stored in many millions of different geographical locations
In contrast, the Grid is an emerging infrastructure that provides seamless access to computing power and data storage capacity distributed over the globe

9. One Web but many Grids
Grid development has been initiated by the academic, scientific and research community, but industry is also interested.
UK e-Science Grid
Netherlands – VLAM, PolderGrid
Germany – UNICORE, Grid proposal
France – Grid funding approved
Italy – INFN Grid
Eire – Grid proposals
Switzerland - Network/Grid proposal
Hungary – DemoGrid, Grid proposal
Norway, Sweden - NorduGrid
NASA Information Power Grid
DOE Science Grid
NSF National Virtual Observatory
NSF GriPhyN
DOE Particle Physics Data Grid
NSF TeraGrid
DOE ASCI Grid
DOE Earth Systems Grid
DARPA CoABS Grid
NEESGrid
DOH BIRN
NSF iVDGL
DataGrid (CERN, ...)
EuroGrid (Unicore)
DataTag (CERN,…)
Astrophysical Virtual Observatory
GRIP (Globus/Unicore)
GRIA (Industrial applications)
GridLab (Cactus Toolkit)
CrossGrid (Infrastructure Components)
EGSO (Solar Physics)

10. What are the principles behind the Grid? 5 big ideas…
1. Sharing resources on a global scale Main issues are trust, different management policies, virtual organisations, 24 hour access and support. 2. Security Main issues are well-defined yet flexible rules, authentication, authorisation, compatibility and standards 3. Balancing the load This is more than just cycle scavenging, need middleware to monitor and broker resources 4. The death of distance Networks delivered 56Kb/s 10 years ago, now we have 155Mb/s, for the LHC anticipate 10 Gb/s 5. Open standards Grid standards are converging, and include Web services, the Globus Toolkit, various protocols

11. Grid applications for Science
Medical/Healthcare (imaging, diagnosis and treatment )
Bioinformatics (study of the human genome and proteome to understand genetic diseases)
Nanotechnology (design of new materials from the molecular scale)
Engineering (design optimization, simulation, failure analysis and remote instrument access and control)
Natural Resources and the Environment (weather forecasting, earth observation, modeling and prediction of complex systems)

12. Grid@CERN CERN projects: LHC Computing Grid (LCG)
EU funded projects led by CERN:
Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE)
+ others
Industry funded projects:
CERN openlab for DataGrid applications

13. LCG: LHC Computing Grid
Timeline
2002: start project
2003: 2003: service opened (LCG-1 started in September with 12 sites)
2004 LCG-2 released
: deploy the LCG environment
2006 – 2008: build and operate the LCG service
As of April 2007:
biggest Grid project in the world
177 sites in more than 30 countries
30’000 processors
14 millions Gigabytes storage

14. The EGEE vision
Access to a production quality GRID will change the way science and much else is done in Europe
An international network of scientists will be able to model a new flood of the Danube in real time, using meteorological and geological data from several centres across Europe.
A team of engineering students will be able to run the latest 3D rendering programs from their laptops using the Grid.
A geneticist at a conference, inspired by a talk she hears, will be able to launch a complex biomolecular simulation from her mobile phone.

15. Openlab for Datagrid Applications
Objectives
Build an ultrahigh performance computer cluster
Link it to the DataGrid and test its performance
Evaluate potential of future commodity technology for LCG

16. Computer Centre Tour Ground Floor OpenLab: equipment of the future
CIXP: CERN Internet Exchange Point
Basement
Storage Silos: >10 petabytes
PC farm: >3000 PC aligned
IMPORTANT – FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH EQUIPMENT AND CABLES DURING VISIT

17. To know more about the Grid…
NETWORKING
CERN Networking with industry – cross fertilisation
GROWTH
Growing the Grid: ”from where the web was born, to where the Grid grew up”
Catalysing the next IT revolution
SPINNING OUT
New technologies and companies evolving
OPENING UP
CERN opening up, reaching out to the world