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What is it?What is it

for?

The Grid

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CERN

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4 ExperimentsALICE

CMS

LHCb ATLAS

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Answering the BIG question

•What actually happened at the big bang?

Answering other questions

•How does gravity work?•How do particles have mass?•Where is the rest of the universe?

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Combined they will create 15PB of Data

every yearThat’s the

equivalent of 22 Trillion Sheets of

A4

More than any single, current,

system can handle

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The Problem

Solution needs to be:• Able to handle massive amounts of data• Able to process large computing jobs• Relatively inexpensive• Simple to use• Accessible 24/7• Easily upgraded

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Super Computers?So we just build them bigger?

But:• Expensive• Inaccessible• Easily

outdated

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Solution: The Internet?

The network which physically

connects the worlds

computers allowing them to

communicate

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Tools built upon the Internet

•Worldwide Web•File Sharing networks •BOINC e.g. SETI@home

The Web specifically designed by scientists at CERN to help with their work

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The Next Stage• Build a new tool

– The computers in the institutions are already connected

– They already share files

How about sharing everything?

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The Electricity Grid

• Always on• As much or as little as you need on tap• Where/how power is generated is

irrelevant to the end user• Just plug in and go

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A Computing Grid

• Always on• As much or as little as you need on tap• Where/how computing power is

generated is irrelevant to the end user• Just plug in and go

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BeforeDistributed computing has been available to scientists for some time but: •The use of different sites has to be negotiated by each scientist individually. •They need a separate account on each system.•Jobs have to be submitted and results collected back by hand. Current distributed computing means the

user has a lot of work to do to get any work done.

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Middleware lets users simply submit jobs to the

Grid without having to know where the data is or

where the jobs will run. The software can run the job where the data is, or move the data to where

there is CPU power available.

Using the Grid and middleware, all the user has to do is submit a job and pick up

the results.

After

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GridPP is a collaboration of Particle Physicists and Computing Scientists

from 20 UK universities and CERN, who are building the UK arm of the Grid for

Particle Physics.

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University Of Birmingham

University Of BristolUniversity Of Cambridge

University Of OxfordRutherford Appleton

LaboratoryWarwick University

University of Sussex

Lancaster University

University Of Liverpool

University Of Manchester

University Of Sheffield

Durham University

University Of Edinburgh

University Of Glasgow

Brunel University

Imperial College London

Queen Mary, University Of

LondonRoyal Holloway,

University Of London

University College London

Swansea University

GridPP

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Numbers

• 20 Institutes• 100+ Individuals• 280TB of storage

• Equivalent of 6,420 desktop computers

Later this year we will have the equivalent of 10,000 desktop PCs on our Grid

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Projects

We are members of two Grid projects:• LCG

– LHC Computing Grid

• EGEE– Enabling Grids for E-sciencE

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Beyond Particle Physics

• WISDOM Challenges:– Avian Flu

• 100 years work done in 4 weeks

– Malaria • 50% of computing power provided by GridPP

• Inferno Grid– Humanities Project in Montclair University New

Jersey• Current texts available on the system include

Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, and Commentaries

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http://www.gridpp.ac.uk