We opted [for] a distributed structure which was in essence a precursor of cloud computing that we all know today
And we called it. The [grid] we've agreed
you are able to share resources computing resources storage resources, so you are able to share a
Lot of computers connected to together and be able to use them as a single big computational resource
The [Tr0] computer Center operates as just one part of the large Hadron Collider computing grid
Which is a worldwide organization?
[federation] of Data centers that
process the Data that is
Produced by detectors around the large Hadron collider [there] are I run one 150 computing centers
Dr0 is a computing center at cern in tier one we have 11 big computing centers that are available there for us
every day of the year
[anytime] for the for experiments only last year there were like 30 petabytes of Data this data
All ends up in the 2-0 data center, then it is massaged a little bit processed
And then it's sent off to tier one data centers for further processing the different delicacy
Detectors are connected to the sun computing center with a dedicated network of 10 gigabytes per second network sites are very powerful
[Network] and they store this data
permanently in tape storage
then cell
Is connected also through dedicated links of 10 gigabits per second as well to 11 computing centers all around the world this data is
Transferred depends on the experiments it was to one or another and then we have hundreds of other computing centers that are part of this
W LcD this LhC computing grid where we are also processing and storing the data?
So you see the data is doing a very big Journey all around the globe
if [I'm] professor, [John] Doe
Working out of the university in italy I would want to know what happened in a specific
detector or in a specific sub detector of a detector
I might request this file that would then reflect a recording of what happened at that time and
This file might be stored in my data center. I might have a cached copy of it. It might be stored a data center
That's completely in a different part of the [world]. You know it could be in a server somewhere in the us
Or it could be retrieved from the to zero Data center here at cern this file
Band would come back to me through a unified file system that spans all the organizations that work with cern that are
On the grid and I would see it as if it were in my local file [system]
And if that file for example is not at this
but on tape
obviously
I would have to wait longer because there's probably a queue to [the] tape robot and then the tape robot has to go get my
Tape has to read it
Then serve the file to me and so on and so on
So if I'm lucky I'm going to get it in a fraction of a second if I'm unlucky I might get it in an hour
or maybe in several hours, but this is
relatively infrequent these days one thing is the storage of the data and another thing is the
Computing of that data first you have to make sure the data is stored somewhere in a permanent way
so we can retrieve this whenever we need to and then you need the computing power to be able to run all these programs the
Physicists write to be able to find the higgs boson or we produce the conditions after a collision and see what has happened
which particles have been created you need a lot of
Computing for this so you need both both sides you need a storage and you need the computing power
people initially thought why don't we build a big data center just right at cern but that was not really a good solution because
First of all we wouldn't have too much to do with it when we don't really do anything else
So there were the only one specific purpose for it and then all the other
scientist would like to participate in this effort would not have the opportunity to do so
If they all want to use this powerful grid you've created. [how] do you prioritize?
How is it decided who gets to use the power and when there is a very important component in the grid which is what we?
Call the Middleware. Let me nervous is the software that is actually making look all these
scattered resources as a huge computer
Computational resource, so thanks to the middleware we have a way to prioritize
Was a way to make sure only
The right users [had] using the resources or security source an important aspect making sure the right people are using the right resources
We allocate computing power or storage per experiment
So the middleware is actually managing all this and making sure the priorities are
Everybody's able to do their job
The [grid] [is] called a [grid]
Because there is an analogy with electricity grid so electricity is something that you don't actually care [what] it comes from
In fact it is coming from different providers it could be
With the wind it could be cold that brings together electricity you just plug in your toaster or your radio and it works
So the idea of the computing grid would be this and we are still far from from this
Use that we have with the electricity grid now. We are not able to say I connect my
whatever a
computer and then I know I would have a
Limited access to computing resources that who know where they are this is not possible yet
But that will decide the idea behind the degree that we would be able to use it in the same way we use electricity
It's not hardware that you can buy in your typical computer shop, but it's not very far from that
You know essentially what we run to the computing center?
RPC servers sometimes with some improvements or some experimental hardware
But the majority of production is something that you can buy off a list from a vendor today now
That is what we have in the data center, but if you go closer to the experiments
And you want to look at the systems that collect the data they become more and more custom
The grid was designed before we knew that the web would be a big thing
It's just another protocol to access files, so the world wide web is again
Just another protocol to access files and remote servers and in this case we need slightly different characteristics than you
Have with [a] standard web processing you know we would like [to] process bigger files
We would like to transfer them faster
Or we would like [to] synchronize files across multiple locations in the world
You know the world wide web can't do that
But the protocols that sit on top of these files that interface between us, and those files really can make that happen we have
Increased our capacity to to execute all these jobs
Benefiting from the fact that we can only count on all these computers large Hadron collider computing grid today has probably
350,000 computing cores, and you know if you if we look at that figure
One hour later, it's probably going to be more than that, so it keeps changing over time
We start at the beginning that the lxe was going to produce something like 15 petabytes of Data and when we turn?
On the LhC, and we run it [-] we went far Beyond our
Expectation so we've generated much more data than what we thought at the beginning. I think it's amazing that these
350,000 processors can work together they can produce results that feed the scientists
You know across the whole world and that out of these results [you] can then produce a plot which changes the way we understand physics
So the physicists definitely can consume any amount of computing you're going to show them. So if you telling me have 10 new computers
They would immediately like to use them and they will surely find new types of analysis to run on those computers
And they will put into good use but on the other hand you've asked about a very interesting topic
Which [is] that of new technologies and that of whether we need to adaPt?
Our software [and] our way of thinking about computers to be [able] to profit fully from those technologies
and if you take you know the topic of accelerators for example
Which is you know either gpus or devices like the Knights family like the Knights corner from?
From intel which they also called the xeon phi
You can't really take the software that you have today and just put it on that device like that and expect that your your
Computation is going to be accelerated you have to put some more effort into that processor performance still keeps improving along with Moore's law
but now more than ever we need to put more thinking into
What changes in computing mean for us? What do we have to do to adapt to those changes?
How do we take [advantage] of next-Generation technology like for example? You know there might be?
new
Processors coming up they have new features such as you know white vectors you might have to do vectorization you might have to do
Multi or many core processing and
Some of the software that you've designed 20 years ago might not be ready for this because nobody has expected that things would develop this
Way, so I think there's you know despite the fact that we're very
Efficiently using the computers we have at our disposal today
There are still [managed] there are still many [challenges] ahead of us to make sure that we can profit from the most recent technologies
you
the LhC has evolved
Computing project, which is called LhC at home where you would be helping physicists to carry out
Simulations that are very important for them to afterwards compare them with [the] real data and this won't
Increase the grid we use for the real data
But it's going to be a very important part in the processing of some of the work that the physicists need to do anyway