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One of the first proton proton collisions seen in the CMS Detector, displayed using the collaboration's software tool "Fireworks"
First beam circulated in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN on 20 November 2009 – a clockwise circulating beam was established at ten o’clock that evening, followed by a circulating beam in the other direction a few hours later. When the proton beams are made collide at the centres of each of the four LHC experiments, the electronic data captured from the detectors will flow at rates ranging from a few hundred MBytes/sec to over one GByte/sec.
Global transport and analysis of this imminent stream of physics data is one of the major computing and networking challenges facing particle physics experiments. Leading edge explorations such as these require advances in all system components, from detectors to remote data analysis. CACR research staff have been involved with demonstrating technologies that reliably deliver over 100 Gb/s sustained from worldwide sources to a single analysis point. CACR also hosts a major “Tier2″ computing center, which is dedicated to receiving LHC datasets over twin 10Gbps networks from CERN, and running applications that analyse the events they contain.
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Building on seven years of record-breaking developments, an international team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)–with partners from Michigan, Florida, Tennessee, Fermilab, Brookhaven, CERN, Brazil, Pakistan, Korea, and Estonia–set new records for sustained data transfer among storage systems during the SuperComputing 2008 (SC08) conference recently held in Austin, Texas.
Caltech’s exhibit at SC08 by the CACR and the High Energy Physics (HEP) group demonstrated new applications and systems for globally distributed data analysis for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, along with Caltech global monitoring system MonALISA and its collaboration system EVO (Enabling Virtual Organizations), together with near real-time simulations of earthquakes in the Southern California region, experiences in time-domain astronomy with VOEventNet and Google Sky, and recent results in multiphysics multiscale modeling with the PSAAP project.
A highlight of the exhibit was the HEP team record-breaking demonstration of storage-to-storage data transfers over wide area networks from a single rack of servers on the exhibit floor. The team’s demonstration of “High Speed LHC Data Gathering, Distribution and Analysis Using Next Generation Networks” achieved a bidirectional peak throughput of 114 gigabits per second (Gbps) and a sustained data flow of more than 110 Gbps among clusters of servers on the show floor and at Caltech, Michigan, CERN (Geneva), Fermilab (Batavia), Brazil (Rio de Janiero, Sao Paulo), Korea (Daegu), Estonia, and locations in the US LHCNet network in Chicago, New York, Geneva, and Amsterdam.
The image shows a sample of the results obtained at the Caltech booth, monitored by MonALISA, flowing in and out of the servers at the booth. The feature in the middle of the graph is the result of briefly losing the local session at SC08 driving some of the flows.
Read more in the Caltech Press Release
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The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometers of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 September 10. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery. (Read the full story on the Caltech website)
The LHC experiments are using a globally distributed “Tiered” grid of computational resources to process the proton collision data. This multi-Tier design was proposed and prototyped by Caltech in the late 90s, and is now universally adopted. The prototype cluster in the CACR machine room has been continually expanded and enhanced since then, and it is now one of the major Tier2 centres in the world, with over 1M SPECInt2k of compute power, several hundred Terabytes of storage space, and multiple 10 Gigabit network connections to other LHC sites in the US, and to CERN. First data from the initial LHC tests has already arrived for processing and analysis on the Caltech Tier2.
Local Press, featuring commentary and an interview with CACR Principal Computational Scientist Julian Bunn:
For further information on the Large Hadron Collider, see the CERN website.
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The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) has rewarded researchers at the California Institute of Technology for better connecting physicists worldwide. Lead project scientist Harvey Newman, professor of physics at Caltech, Julian Bunn of the Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research, and their international team of researchers will receive a trophy for Innovations in Networking at a ceremony in Oakland, California, on March 11.
Based on exciting recent developments, the Caltech award is for the project called UltraLight, Bunn says. UltraLight was developed in 2004 in large part to support the decades of research that will emerge from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The project provides advanced global systems and networks, and this summer will start transferring data as the LHC becomes operational.
UltraLight exhibited its capabilities in a showroom demonstration for CENIC during a supercomputing conference in November 2007, sustaining disk-to-disk data transfers of up to 88 gigabits per second (Gbps) between Caltech and Reno, Nevada, for more than a day. But data flows from the LHC experiments will be the first time that UltraLight will strut its stuff for scientists hungry for data.
The CENIC Innovations in Networking awards are split into four categories, and this year for the first time CENIC declared a tie in Experimental/Developmental Applications between UltraLight and another contender, CineGrid, which facilitates the exchange of digital media over a network. Bunn will accept the trophy and present the group’s project at the CENIC 2008: Lightpath to the Stars conference in Oakland on Tuesday, March 11.
> Read more at the Caltech Press Release.
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Click here for a full-sized version of the thumbnail above. Image shows a MonALISA plot of the aggregated network traffic to the Caltech booth, during and after the Bandwidth Challenge. (The initial blue region at the left of the graph is the BWC entry.)
An international team of physicists, computer scientists, and network engineers led by the California Institute of Technology, CERN, and the University of Michigan with partners at the University of Florida and Vanderbilt, as well as participants from Brazil and Korea, joined forces to set new records for sustained data transfer between storage systems during the SC06 Bandwidth Challenge.
The high-energy physics team’s demonstration of “High Speed Data Gathering, Distribution and Analysis for Physics Discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider” achieved a peak throughput of 17.77 gigabits per second (Gbps) between clusters of servers at the show floor and at Caltech. Following the rules set for the SC06 Bandwidth Challenge, the team used a single 10-Gbps link provided by National Lambda Rail that carried data in both directions. Sustained throughput throughout the night prior to the bandwidth challenge exceeded 16 Gbps (or two gigabytes per second) using just 10 pairs of small servers sending data at 9 Gbps to Caltech from Tampa, and eight pairs of servers sending 7 Gbps of data in the reverse direction. (Read more in the Caltech Press Release)
