HPCwire: Chicago-Indiana Network to Handle Massive Data Flow

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January 05, 2007

Chicago-Indiana Network to Handle Massive Data Flow

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Massive quantities of data will soon begin flowing from the largest scientific instrument ever built into an international network of computer centers, including one operated jointly by the University of Chicago and Indiana University. The first phase of the Chicago-Indiana center, formally known as the MidWest Tier 2 Center, is now up and running, crunching test data in preparation for the real thing.

The Chicago-Indiana system is one of five Tier-2 (regional) centers in the United States that will receive data from one of four massive detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. When the new instrument begins operating late next year, beams of protons will collide 40 million times a second. When each of those proton beams reaches full intensity, each collision will produce approximately 23 interactions between protons that will create various types of subatomic particles.

"Understanding what's interesting and useful to record from those interactions is quite a challenge, because there is far more information than one is able to record for leisurely analysis," said James Pilcher, a Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago.

Frederick Luehring, a Senior Research Scientist at Indiana University, adds, "Even once the data is recorded, it will take years of careful sifting and sorting, which will require massive amounts of computing power to extract the final scientific results."

Pilcher and Luehring are among the physicists at 158 institutions in 35 nations who will harness the unprecedented power of the new collider in the ATLAS (A Toroidal Large Hadron Collider Apparatus) experiment at CERN. One of their goals will be to look for the long-sought Higgs boson, the theoretical particle that endows all objects in the universe with mass. The energy needed to create the Higgs boson is thought to be well within the capabilities of the Large Hadron Collider, Pilcher said. "If we don't see it, there's going to be a great deal of consternation," he said.

Another goal among physicists around the world is the search for evidence of supersymmetric particles, which could lead to the discovery of extra dimensions.

Physicists at Chicago and Indiana built components for the ATLAS particle detector with the search for the Higgs boson and supersymmetry in mind. The University of Chicago's Computation Institute, together with Indiana University's information technology services organization and Department of Physics, also collaborate on scientific grid computing projects that provide high-speed network computer power on demand, much the way a power grid provides electricity.

"In high-energy physics as in many disciplines, the computers and software used to analyze experimental data are now as vital to scientific success as the experimental apparatus that generate the data," said Ian Foster, director of the Computation Institute and a pioneer of grid computing. "This new Tier-2 center emphasizes the strengths that we have developed within the Computation Institute in creating and applying innovative computational infrastructure."

Luehring added, "Grid computing is the use of geographically distributed computing resources. Within ATLAS we have deliberately designed a tiered structure of computing resources spread throughout much of the world. All of these sites interconnect with each other using grid-computing techniques. In addition, grid-computing allows us to use other computing resources that are not fully dedicated to ATLAS or high-energy physics."

Data from the ATLAS experiment will first flow to Tier-0, the main computational center at CERN. Tier-0 will then transmit the data to 11 Tier-1 centers worldwide, including Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y. Brookhaven will, in turn, distribute portions of the CERN data to the various Tier-2 centers.

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