Slides 2 9 : What is CERN

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Overview

• Slides 2 9 What is CERN?
• general overview of CERN
• Slides 10 19 What is LHC?
• LHC and LHC challenges in terms of data and CPU
• Slides 20 36 The Grid
• the GRID in general
• Slides 37 50 The Grid _at_ CERN
• grid projects at CERN (EDG, DataTAG, LCG, Grace,
  Mammogrid, Openlab)
• Short video clips
• CERN in 2 minutes
• Simulation of LHC collider
• The Grid

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What is CERN?

• CERN is
• 2500 staff scientists (physicists, engineers,
  )
• Some 6500 visiting scientists (half of the
  world's particle physicists)
• They come from
• 500 universities
• representing
• 80 nationalities.

• CERN is the world's largest particle physics
  centre
• Particle physics is about
• - elementary particles which all matter in the
• Universe is made of
• - fundamental forces which hold matter together
• Particles physics requires
• - special tools to create and study new
  particles

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CERN Site
Mont Blanc, 4810 m
Downtown Geneva
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What is CERN?

• The special tools for particle physics are
• ACCELERATORS, huge machines able to speed up
  particles to very high energies before colliding
  them into other particles
• DETECTORS, massive instruments which register
  the particles produced when the accelerated
  particles collide

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What is CERN?

• Physicists smash particles into each other to
• - identify their components
• - create new particles
• - reveal the nature of the interactions between
  them - create an environment similar to the one
  present at
• the origin of our Universe
• What for? To answer fundamental questions like
  
• how did the Universe begin? What is the origin
  of mass?
• What is the nature of antimatter?

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What is CERN?
CERN in 2 minutes Movie
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What is CERN?
The World Wide Web was invented here, to
improve and speed-up the information sharing
between physicists working all over the world!
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What is CERN?

• CERN has made many important discoveries, but
  our current understanding of the Universe is
  still incomplete!
• Higher energy collisions are the key to further
  discoveries of more massive particles (Emc2)
• One particle predicted by theorists remains
  elusive the Higgs boson

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What is CERN?

• To answer questions still open, CERN is
  building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
• The LHC will be the most powerful instrument
  ever built to investigate elementary particles
• If the Higgs boson exists, the LHC will almost
  certainly find it

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What is LHC?
LHC is due to switch on in 2007 Four
experiments, with detectors as big as
cathedrals ALICE ATLAS CMS LHCb

• LHC will collide beams of protons at an energy
  of 14 TeV
• Using the latest super-conducting technologies,
  it will operate at about 3000C, just above
  absolute zero of temperature.
• With its 27 km circumference, the accelerator
  will be the largest superconducting installation
  in the world.

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accelerators, detectors, LHC?
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The LHC Data Challenge

• A particle collision an event
• Physicist's goal is to count, trace and
  characterize all the particles produced and fully
  reconstruct the process.
• Among all tracks, the presence of special
  shapes is the sign for the occurrence of
  interesting interactions.
• One way to find the Higgs boson
• look for characteristic decay pattern producing
  4 muons

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The LHC Data Challenge
Starting from this event
Selectivity 1 in 1013 Like looking for 1
person in a thousand world populations! Or for a
needle in 20 million haystacks!
You are looking for this signature
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1 Megabyte (1MB) A digital photo 1 Gigabyte
(1GB) 1000MB 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 World
annual information production
LHC data

• 40 million collisions per second
• After filtering, 100 collisions of interest per
  second
• A Megabyte of data digitised for each collision
  recording rate of 0.1 Gigabytes/sec
• 1010 collisions recorded each year
• 10 Petabytes/year of data

CMS
LHCb
ATLAS
ALICE
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Balloon (30 Km)
LHC data
CD stack with 1 year LHC data! ( 20 Km)
LHC data correspond to about 20 million CDs each
year!
Concorde (15 Km)
Where will the experiments store all of these
data?
Mt. Blanc (4.8 Km)
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LHC processing

• Simulation start from theory and detector
  characteristics and compute what detector should
  have seen
• Reconstruction transform signals from the
  detector to physical properties (energies, charge
  of particles, ..)
• Analysis Find collisions with similar features,
  use of complex algorithms to extract physics

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LHC 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?
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Computing at CERN

• High-throughput computing based on reliable
  commodity technology
• More than 1000 dual processor PCs
• More than 1 Petabyte of data on disk and tapes

Nowhere near enough!
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Computing for LHC
Europe 267 institutes 4603 users Elsewhere
208 institutes 1632 users

• Problem CERN alone can provide only a fraction
  of the necessary resources
• Solution Computing centers, which were isolated
  in the past, should now be connected, uniting the
  computing resources of particle physicists in the
  world!  

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Computing for LHC a problem?
The Grid a possible solution!
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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.

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What is the Grid?

• The term Grid was coined by Ian Foster and Carl
  Kesselman (Grid bible The Grid blueprint for a
  new computing infrastructure).
• The name Grid is chosen by analogy with the
  electric power grid plug-in to computing power
  without worrying where it comes from, like a
  toaster.
• The idea has been around under other names for a
  while (distributed computing, metacomputing, ).
• This time, technology is in place to realise the
  dream on a global scale.

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How will it work?

• The Grid relies on advanced software, called
  middleware, which ensures seamless communication
  between different computers and different parts
  of the world

• The Grid search engine will not only find the
  data the scientist needs, but also the data
  processing techniques and the computing power to
  carry them out

• It will distribute the computing task to
  wherever in the world there is spare capacity,
  and send the result to the scientist

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How will it work?

• The GRID middleware
• Finds convenient places for the scientists job
  (computing task) to be run
• Optimises use of the widely dispersed resources
• Organises efficient access to scientific data
• Deals with authentication to the different sites
  that the scientists will be using
• Interfaces to local site authorisation
• and resource allocation policies
• Runs the jobs
• Monitors progress
• Recovers from problems
• and .
• Tells you when the work is complete and transfers
  the result back!

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What are the challenges?
Must share data between thousands of scientists
with multiple interests Must link major computer
centres, not just PCs Must ensure all data
accessible anywhere, anytime Must grow rapidly,
yet remain reliable for more than a decade Must
cope with different management policies of
different centres Must ensure data security
more is at stake than just money! Must be up and
running by 2007
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Benefits for Science

• More effective and seamless collaboration of
  dispersed communities, both scientific and
  commercial
• Ability to run large-scale applications
  comprising thousands of computers, for wide range
  of applications
• Transparent access to distributed resources from
  your desktop, or even your mobile phone
• The term e-Science has been coined to express
  these benefits

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Grid projects in the world

• 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)

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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)

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Medical/Healthcare Applications
The Grid will enable a standardized, distributed
digital mammography resource for improving
diagnostic confidence"

• Digital image archives
• Collaborative virtual environments
• On-line clinical conferences

The Grid makes it possible to use large
collections of images in new, dynamic ways,
including medical diagnosis.
The ability to visualise 3D medical images is
key to the diagnosis of pathologies and
pre-surgical planning
Quotes from http//gridoutreach.org.uk
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Bioinformatics

• Capturing the complex and evolving patterns of
  genetic information, determining the development
  of an embryo
• Understanding the genetic interactions that
  underlie the processes of life-form development,
  disease and evolution.

Every time a new genome is sequenced the result
is compared in a variety of ways with other
genomes. Each code is made of 3.5 billion pairs
of chemicals
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Nanotechnology

• New and 'better' materials
• Benefits in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, food
  production,
• electronics manufacture from the faster,
  cheaper discovery of new
• catalysts, metals, polymers, organic and
  inorganic materials

The Grid has the potential to store and analyze
data on a scale that will support faster, cheaper
synthesis of a whole range of new materials.
Quotes from http//gridoutreach.org.uk
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Natural Resources/Environment

• Modeling and prediction of earthquakes
• Climate change studies and weather forecast
• Pollution control
• Socio-economic growth planning, financial
  modeling and
• performance optimization

Federations of heterogeneous databases can be
exploited through the Grid to solve complex
questions about global issues such as
biodiversity.
Quotes from http//gridoutreach.org.uk
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Precursors of the Grid

• SETI_at_home sharing of spare PC processing power
  to analyze radio signals
• Napster sharing of data (music) between
  computers
• Entropia DCGrid commercial solution for sharing
  workstations within a company

The difference The Grid CERN is developing will
combine resources at major computer centers, and
require dedicated equipment and sophisticated
middleware to monitor and allocate resources
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SETI_at_home a grassroots Grid
gt1 million years of computer processing
time gt3.5 million have downloaded the
screensaver gt30 Teraflops rating (ASCI White
12 Teraflops)
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Spinoff from SETI_at_home
Spawned a cottage industry Xpulsar_at_home,
Genome_at_home, Folding_at_home, evolutionary_at_home,
FightAIDS_at_home, SARS_at_home... Spawned a real
industry Entropia, United Devices, Popular
Power...
Major limitations Only suitable for
embarrasingly parallel problems Cycle
scavenging relies on goodwill
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Who will use Grids?

• Computational scientists engineers large
  scale modeling of complex structures
• Experimental scientists storing and analyzing
  large data sets
• Collaborations large scale multi-institutional
  projects
• Corporations global enterprises and industrial
  partnership
• Environmentalists climate monitoring and
  modeling
• Training education virtual learning rooms and
  laboratories

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Grid at CERN
Grid is a solution for LHC computing
requirements ? CERN involved in many Grid
development efforts worldwide
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Grid _at_ CERN

• CERN projects
• LHC Computing Grid (LCG)
• EC funded projects led by CERN
• European DataGrid (EDG)
• others
• Industry funded projects
• CERN openlab for DataGrid applications

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LHC Computing Grid (LCG)

• Mission
• Grid deployment project aimed at installing a
  functioning Grid to help the LHC experiments
  collect and analyse the data coming from the
  detectors
• Strategy
• Integrate thousands of computers at dozens of
  participating institutes worldwide into a global
  computing resource
• Rely on software being developed in advanced
  grid technology projects, both in Europe and in
  the USA

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LHC Computing Grid (LCG)

• People
• Over 150 physicists, computer scientists and
  engineers from partner research centres around
  the world
• Timeline
• 2002 start project
• 2003 service opened (Sept)
• 2002 - 2005 prepare and deploy the environment
  for LHC computing
• 2006 2008 acquire, build and operate the LHC
  computing service

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European DataGrid (EDG)

• Mission
• Develop the necessary middleware to run a Grid
  on a testbed involving computer centers in
  Europe
• Key features
• Largest software development project ever funded
  by the EU (9.8 million euros)
• Three year phased developments demos
  (2001-2003)
• Three application fields High Energy Physics,
  Earth
• Observation and Genomic Exploration

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European DataGrid (EDG)

• People
• Total of 21 partners, over 150 programmers from
  research and academic institutes as well as
  industrial companies
• Status
• Testbed including approximately 1000 CPUs at 15
  sites
• Several improved versions of middleware software
  (final release end 2003)
• Several components of software integrated in LCG
• Software used by partner projects DataTAG,
  CROSSGRID

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EGEE Enabling Grids for e-Science in Europe

• Mission
• Deliver 24/7 Grid service to European science
  re-engineer and harden Grid middleware for
  production market Grid solutions to different
  scientific communities
• Be the first international multiscience
  production Grid facility
• Key features
• 100 million euros/4years
• gt400 software engineers service support
• 70 European partners

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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 centers 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.
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DataTAG

• Mission
• Develop advanced networking solutions for
  transatlantic Grid communications.
• Status
• Recent land speed data transfer record 1
  TeraByte of data transferred in 1hr between SLAC
  and CERN (equivalent to 200 DVD movies or one CD
  every 2.3s).

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GRACE

• Background
• Today search engines are extremely centralized.
  In order to index a document they must download
  it, process it and store its index - all in one
  central location.
• Mission
• develop a decentralized search engine providing
  dynamical categorisation of information. Uses
  Grid technology and semantic tools.

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MammoGrid

• Background
• Early diagnosis through mammography screening
  improves prognosis BUT quality control in
  acquisition, diagnosis and efficient data
  management is vital.
• Mission
• To provide a demonstrator for use in
  epidemiological studies, quality control and
  validation of computer aided detection algorithms.

• Status
• Building Grid-enabled repository of mammography
  data for research and training that contain
  sufficiently large statistical samples.

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CERN openlab for DataGrid applications

• Mission
• Testbed for cutting edge Grid software and
  hardware
• Industry consortium for Grid-related
  technologies of common interest
• Training ground for a new generation of
  engineers to learn about Grid
• Partners
• CERN
• ENTERASYS
• HP
• IBM
• INTEL

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CERN openlab for DataGrid applications

• CERN opencluster
• Build an ultrahigh performance computer cluster
• Link it to the DataGrid and test its performance
• Evaluate potential of future commodity
  technology for LHC
• Student Program
• student teams get hands-on experience with some
  of the
• latest hardware and software technologies for
  the Grid
• learn about how CERN and its partners are
  developing
• Grid technology for scientific and industrial
  purposes
• external lab visits and special invited talks

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Grid _at_ CERN
The Grid Movie