# Presentation: 093154

## Slide 1

##   Grid

*Dr. Francois Grey*
*IT Department, CERN*

- to the
-   Grid

- From the
-    Web

## Slide 3

**Notes:**
Before I explain what the Web is, I would like to clarify a frequent point of confusion. The web is NOT the same as the internet. So first, I want to explain what the Internet is

## Slide 4

## Why was the Web invented at CERN?

- Science depends on free **access to information** and exchange of ideas. CERN is the hub of a worldwide community of **6500 scientists** in **80 countries.**
- CERN has a long history of being at the forefront of **scientific computing** and **networking **(first lab on Internet outside the US).
- During the preparation of the previous large project LEP, the need to share documents in a global way became vital.

## How did it start?

- 1989: **Tim Berners-Lee** circulates “Information Management: A proposal” to help with future Large Hadron Collider project.
- 1991: Early **www system released** to high energy physics via the CERN program library. First web servers located in European physics laboratories.
- 1993: First Mosaic browser; web reaches 500 servers and 1% of Internet traffic; CERN places **WWW in the public domain**.

**Notes:**
Note: Mention the famous remark of TBL’s boss “Interesting but vague” about the proposal! TBLs paper specifically refers to LHC in first line “Many of the discussions  of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question “Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project” . Putting it in the public domain (under open source licence due to F Fluckiger) ensures it is widely adopted.

## Status today

- In December 2005, the one-billionth user went online!
- In science, vital for communication, collaboration, publishing

## Slide 8

## Grid history

- Name “Grid” chosen by analogy with electric power grid (Foster and Kesselman 1997)
- Vision: plug-in computer for processing power just like plugging in toaster for electricity.
- Concept has been around for decades  (distributed computing, metacomputing)
- Key difference with the Grid is to realise the vision on a global scale.

## How does the Grid work?

- It relies on advanced software, called **middleware**.
- Middleware automatically finds the **data** the scientist needs, and the **computing power **to analyse it.
- Middleware balances the load on different resources. It also handles **security, accounting, monitoring **and much more.

## Different Grids for different needs

**Different Grids for different needs**

- There is as yet no unified Grid, like there is a single web.
- Rather **there are many Grids** for many applications:
**Enterprise Grids** link together PCs within one company.
**Volunteer computing **links together public computers.
**Scientific Grids** link together major computing centres.
- Latest trend **federates national Grids** into global Grid infrastructure.
- High Energy Physics is a driving force for this.

## Slide 12

## What does CERN do?

- CERN is the world's largest particle physics centre
- CERN is a European infrastructure for a global science community
- CERN’s particle accelerators answer fundamental science questions
*how did the Universe begin?  *
*what is the origin of mass? *
*what is the nature of antimatter?*

## The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

**Mont Blanc, 4810 m**

**Downtown Geneva**

**LHC tunnel**

**CERN**

## View of the ATLAS detector (under construction) along the beam axis

**View of the ATLAS detector (under construction) along the beam axis**

## High Energy Physics: a global community

## LHC Data Analysis

**LHC Data Analysis**

- 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.
- Example the Higgs boson:
- look for characteristic decay pattern producing 4 muons
- Record >8 million events per day
- On average only one event per day will be a Higgs boson

## Petabyte science

***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****** ***

**Petabyte science**

- Detectors read 40 million times per second
- After filtering, 100 collisions of interest per second
- > 1 Megabyte of data per collision  recording rate > 1 Gigabyte/sec
- 1010 collisions recorded each year stored data > 10  Petabytes/year

## The LHC Data Challenge

- LHC experiments will produce **10-15 million Gigabytes** of data each year (about 20 million CDs!)
- LHC data analysis requires a computing power equivalent to **~ 100,000 of today's fastest PC processors**.
- Requires many cooperating computer centres, CERN proving only ~20% of the CPU power

## CERN Computer Centre

- High-throughput computing based on reliable “commodity” technology
- More than 2500 dual processor PCs
- About 3 million Gigabytes of data on disk and tapes
- Problem:** nowhere near enough capacity**
- Solution:** LHC Computing Grid **(>100 centres worldwide)

## LHC Computing Grid

- SOLUTION: use Grid technology to unite computing resources of particle physics institutes around the world.
- CERN leads three major Grid projects:
**LCG:** LHC Computing Grid Project (High Energy Physics)
**EGEE:** Enabling Grid for E-sciencE project (all sciences)
**CERN openlab:** partnership with leading IT firms (Grid R&D)

## The LHC Computing Grid project launched a service with 12 sites in 2003. Today 200 sites in 30 countries with 16,000 PCs
LCG service based on three Grids: EGEE, NorduGrid, OSG
LCG supports virtual organisations for LHC experiments

- LCG **service** based on three Grids: EGEE, NorduGrid, OSG
- LCG supports **virtual organisations** for LHC experiments

**LCG: LHC Computing Grid project**

## LHC Computing Grid is working now!

## EGEE: Enabling Grids for E-sciencE

**EGEE: **a multi-science Grid infrastructure** **
**      ****91 institutional partners**
-   > 180 sites, 40 countries
-   > 24,000 processors  ~ 5 PB storage

**EGEE Grid Sites : Q1 2006**

**EGEE: Enabling Grids for E-sciencE**

## Possible applications of EGEE

- Government: Help government agencies share data and forecasting resources (earthquakes, floods)
- Education: Help students access large computing resources for educational purposes (shrink digital divide)
- Business: Help small companies access large computing resources for drug design, materials simulation etc.

## Example: EGEE Attacks Avian Flu

- EGEE used to analyse 300,000 possible potential drug compounds against bird flu virus, H5N1.
- 2000 computers at 60 computer centres in Europe, Russia, Taiwan, Israel ran during four weeks in April - the equivalent of 100 years on a single computer.
- Potential drug compounds now being identified and ranked

***Neuraminidase, one of the two major surface proteins of influenza viruses, facilitating the release of virions from infected cells****. Image Courtesy Ying-Ta Wu, AcademiaSinica. *

## Example: Geocluster industrial application 

- The first industrial application successfully running on EGEE
- Developed by the Compagnie Générale de Géophysique (CGG), doing geophysical simulations for oil, gas, mining and environmental industries.
- EGEE technology helps CGG to federate its computing resources around the globe.

## Grids for Education 

- e-Star: distributed astronomy using Grids
- LeGE: e-Learning with Grids
- Quarknet: Cosmic Ray e-Lab using Grid techniques
- EELA: Europe-Latin America Grids for education
- DILIGENT: Virtual Digital Library for education
- N.B. Many projects still in conceptual stage

- The main school-based cosmic-ray arrays in Europe

## CERN openlab

- Industry partners provide state of the art technology, manpower
- CERN tests it in a demanding, heterogeneous Grid environment

## Slide 30

## LHC@home: volunteer computing

- Volunteer computing project based on BOINC platform (used by SETI@home)
- Calculates stability of LHC proton orbits
- Resources (PCs, laptops) donated by volunteers around the world
- 	more than 30 000 users, over 1500 	CPU years of processing
- 	Note: SETI@home dowloaded on 	more than 5m machines!
- Objectives: extra CPU power and raising public awareness of CERN and the LHC.
- Started as an outreach project for CERN 50th Anniversary 2004, used for Year of Physics (Einstein Year) 2005

## The @home community

- Competition between individuals and teams for “credit”.
- Websites and regular updates on status of project by scientists.
- Forums for users to discuss the science behind the project.
- The volunteers show great interest in CERN and the LHC.
- Supply each other with scientific information.

- LHC@home screensaver

- Example of one of the discussion forums on LHC@home

## Volunteer computing for science in schools

- SETI@home 		Extraterrestrial radio signal search
- FightAids@home 		AIDS drugs design
- Einstein@home		Gravitational wave search
- Rosetta@home		Protein shapes for disease cure
- Climateprediction.net		Climate modelling
- Compute against Cancer	Study effects of chemotherapy
- Evolution@home		Genetic causes of extinction
- Folding@home		Protein folding for disease cure
- QMC@home			Quantum simulation of molecules
- GIMPS 			Search for large prime numbers
- ChessBrain			Distributed chess supercomputer
- ...and many more!
- Helen McGlone will explain how to join a project and create a team tomorrow in the workshop on Grids.

## Africa@home: dealing with the digital divide

- 3 month student project
- 500 PCs joined in 2 days
- >100 CPU-years in 2 months
- Demoed at WSIS Tunis
- Server to be set up in Dakar

## Conclusions and Speculations

- Scientific Grids are already working!
*But the Grid today is where the Web was 10 years ago*
- The Grid is not (yet) generally accessible
*But ‘@home’ projects let people participate in real science...*
*...**and there are a few public Grid-based science projects emerging*
- The Grid is helping to globalise science
*This may help to narrow the digital divide*
- There is a lot of hype about the Grid
*Nano, Grid, e-Science are just words...*
*...**but words can make young people dream!*

## Thank you!

- For more information about the Grid...

***Thank you!***