CERN and the Information Technology Society

1
CERN and the Information Technology Society

• By Bob Jones
• EGEE Technical Director
• CERN
• Geneva - Switzerland

2
What is CERN?

• CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear
  Research
• The world's largest particle physics laboratory
• explores what matter is made of, and what forces
  hold it together
• Founded in 1954 (50 years this year!)
• Greece was one of the 12 founding members
• One of Europe's first truly international joint
  ventures
• Now includes 20 Member States
• ... where the web was born!

www.cern.ch
3
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

• CERN is building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
  the most powerful instrument ever built to
  investigate elementary particles
• With its 27 km circumference, the accelerator
  will be the largest superconducting installation
  in the world

4
Challenges for LHC

• The computational requirements of the experiments
  that will use the LHC are enormous
• 12-14 PetaBytes (1015 bytes) of data will be
  generated each year, the equivalent of more than
  20 million CDs
• LHC data analysis requires a computing power
  equivalent to 100,000 of today's fastest PC
  processors!
• Data and results must be available to thousands
  of physicists around the world

ATLAS
CMS
LHCb
5
eScience
Such data and compute intensive sciences are next
generation applications that have extreme needs
but are likely to become mainstream in the next 5
years

• Physics/Astronomy (data from different kinds of
  research instruments)
• Medical/Healthcare (imaging, diagnosis and
  treatment )
• Bioinformatics (study of the human genome and
  proteome to understand genetic diseases)
• Nanotechnology (design of new materials from the
  molecular scale)
• Engineering (design optimization, simulation,
  failure analysis and remote Instrument access and
  control)
• Natural Resources and the Environment (weather
  forecasting, earth observation, modeling and
  prediction of complex systems river floods and
  earthquake simulation)

6
Grids - a new computing paradigm

• Access to a world-wide virtual computing
  laboratory with almost infinite resources
• Possibility to organize distributed scientific
  communities in Virtual Organisations
• Transparent access to distributed data and easy
  workload management
• Easy to use application interfaces

7
How does the grid work?

• The Grid relies on advanced software, called
  middleware, which ensures seamless communication
  between different computers and different parts
  of the world
• The Grid search engine not only finds the data
  the scientist needs, but also the data processing
  techniques and the computing power to carry them
  out
• It distributes the computing task to wherever in
  the world there is available capacity, and sends
  the result back to the scientist

8
What is the EGEE project?

• Build a large-scale production grid service to
• Support science and technology worldwide
• Link with and build on national, regional and
  international initiatives
• Foster international cooperation both in the
  creation and the use of the e-infrastructure

9
EGEE organisation

• 70 leading institutions in 27 countries,
  federated in regional Grids
• 32 M Euros EU funding (2004-5), O(100 M) total
  budget for first 2 years starting 1st April 2004
• Aiming for a combined capacity of over 20000
  CPUs (one of the largest international Grid
  infrastructures ever assembled)
• 300 dedicated staff

South-East Europe federation is lead by GRNET
(Greece) NCSR Demokritos is contributing to the
project and brings expertise from the CrossGrid
project
10
EGEE Activities

• Emphasis on operating a production grid and
  supporting the end-users
• 48 service activities (Grid Operations, Support
  and Management, Network Resource Provision)
• 24 middleware re-engineering (Quality
  Assurance, Security, Network Services
  Development)
• 28 networking (Management, Dissemination and
  Outreach, User Training and Education,
  Application Identification and Support, Policy
  and International Cooperation)

11
EGEE today service

• A production grid service originally established
  by the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) project that now
  links 8000 CPUs from 80 sites in more than 25
  countries and continues to grow
• Extension to the Balkans via the SEE-GRID project
  lead by GRNET (Greece)

HellasGrid brings together Greek organisations
(including Demokritos) to form a Regional
Operations Centre
12
EGEE today applications

• Supports many applications from physics, biology,
  geophysics (industry), computational chemistry,
  astro-particle physics with interest from
  astrophysics, hydrology, seismology, grid search
  engines, stock market simulators, digital video
  etc.

13
EGEE today training

• 600 people already trained at 40
  courses/presentations around the world and many
  more planned
• 80 sets of training material and courses
  available online from introductory to advanced
  level
• A general purpose portal for users (GENIUS) and
  testbed to host tutorials (GILDA)

14
EGEE today dissemination

• 1st project conference
• Over 300 delegates came to the 4 day kick-off
  event during April in Cork Ireland
• 2nd project conference
• 380 people came together during 22-26 November in
  The Hague
• 3rd project conference scheduled
• Scheduled in Athens on 18-22 April05
• Websites, Brochures and press releases
• For project and general public
• Information packs for the general public, press
  and industry

www.eu-egee.org
15
A look to the Future

• We have a window of opportunity to move grids
  from research to production, as networks did a
  few years ago
• Success will lead to the adoption of grid
  technology as the main computing infrastructure
  for science
• The next 2 years of EGEE will be critical in
  establishing the first generation of production
  grids
• If we succeed then the potential return to
  international scientific communities will be
  enormous and open the path for commercial and
  industrial applications

16
Further information

• EGEE project www.eu-egee.org
• LCG Project lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG
• SEE-Grid Project www.see-grid.org
• The Grid Café - www.gridcafe.org
• CERN www.cern.ch