UK scientists at CCLRC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire recently joined computing centres around the world in a networking challenge that saw RAL transfer 60 million megabytes of data over a ten-day period. A home user with a 512 kilobit per second broadband connection would be waiting 30 years to complete a download of the same size. RAL is a member of the GridPP project - the UK effort by particle physicists to prepare for the massive data volumes expected from the next generation of particle physics experiments.
The exercise was designed to test the global computing infrastructure for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest particle physics experiment currently being built at CERN in Switzerland. To get ready for the LHC's unprecedented data rates, the worldwide collaboration is carrying out a series of "Service Challenges", the most recent of which (Service Challenge 2) has just been successfully completed. The eight labs involved sustained an average continuous data flow of 600 megabytes per second (MB/s) for 10 days from CERN. The total amount of data transmitted during this challenge (500 million megabytes) would take about 250 years to download using a typical 512 kilobit per second household broadband connection.
"This service challenge is a key step on the way to managing the torrents of data anticipated from the LHC," said Jamie Shiers, manager of the service challenges at CERN. "When the LHC starts operating in 2007, it will be the most data-intensive physics instrument on the planet, producing more than 1500 megabytes of data every second for over a decade."
The service challenge participants included laboratories in the US (Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab), in Germany (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe), in France (CCIN2P3), in Italy (INFN-CNAF), in the Netherlands (SARA/NIKHEF) and in the UK (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory).
LHC computing aims to use a world-wide Grid infrastructure of computing centres to provide sufficient computational, storage and network resources to fully exploit the scientific potential of the four major LHC experiments. The infrastructure relies on several national and regional science grids. The service challenge used resources from the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) project, the Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE) project, Grid3/Open Science Grid (OSG), INFNGrid and GridPP.
The LHC service challenges will ramp up to the level of computing capacity, reliability and ease of use that will be required by the worldwide community of over 6000 scientists working on the LHC experiments. During LHC operation, the major computing centres involved in the Grid infrastructure will collectively store the data from all four LHC experiments. Scientists working at over two hundred other computing facilities in universities and research laboratories around the globe, where much of the data analysis will be carried out, will access the data via the Grid.
RAL is the UK's national computer centre for the LCG project. It works with centres at UK universities to form the UK particle physics Grid, which currently consists of more than 2,000 CPUs and one million Gigabytes of storage capacity. The UK's contribution to LCG is managed by the £33m GridPP project, funded by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC).
In order to meet the unprecedented data rates it expects to receive from the LHC in 2007, RAL must substantially increase its data acceptance rates from the
current 70MB/s. During the next Service Challenge in July, RAL will sustain
rates of 150MB/s over one month while simultaneously archiving part of the data to tape. By April 2006, rates of 220MB/s will be handled, with tests to accept 72 hour bursts of data at twice this rate. By 2007, the RAL computing centre will have to manage all the above while also serving data to its downstream UK university sites and at the same time feeding data to its vast 1000 processor computing cluster. RAL is well placed to meet this challenge having already carried out internal load tests of almost 400MB/s using only 4 of its total of 60 available disk servers.
Dr Andrew Sansum, the manager of the particle physics computing centre at RAL, is enthusiastic about the implications of the Service Challenge for e-Science in the UK, saying,
"As data-set sizes grow, the ability to rapidly move large datasets across the UK Grid will be of vital importance to many UK projects. Demonstrating the ability to meet the LHC Data Challenge has acted as a proof of capability that will inspire UK network providers and other UK science projects alike."
RAL made use of a new national high-speed research network known as UKLight (www.uklight.ac.uk). UKLight is managed by UKERNA (United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association) on behalf of the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee). It complements the SuperJANET 4 IP production network and brings the UK into a global facility aimed at pioneering new ways of networking to enable research. Multi-Gbit/s connections are available between sites in the UK and many overseas locations via 10 Gbit/s circuits to Chicago and Amsterdam from a hub in London. The service challenge was one of the first research projects to make use of the network, which has also now been used by Radio Astronomy, SuperComputing and health applications.
UKLight enables the UK to join several other leading networks in the world creating an international experimental testbed for optical networking. It is part of the GLIF consortium which comprises the major proponents of advanced networking (www.glif.is). UKLight will bring together leading-edge applications, Internet engineering for the future, and optical communications engineering, and enable UK researchers to join the growing international consortium which currently spans Europe and North America. These include STARLIGHT in the USA, SURFnet in the Netherlands (NetherLIGHT), CANARIE (Canadian academic network), CERN in Geneva, and NorthernLIGHT bringing the Nordic countries onboard. UKLight will connect JANET users to the testbed and also provide access for UK researchers to the Internet2 facilities in the USA via StarLIGHT.
GridPP is a six-year PPARC project with additional associated funding from HEFCE, SHEFC and the European Union. A collaboration of twenty UK Universities and research institutes and CERN, it will provide the UK's contribution to the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid. For more information see www.gridpp.ac.uk. The GridPP Collaboration involves: The University of Birmingham; The University of Bristol; Brunel University; CERN, European Particle Physics Laboratory; The University of Cambridge; Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils; The University of Durham; The University of Edinburgh; The University of Glasgow; Imperial College London; Lancaster University; The University of Liverpool; The University of Manchester; Oxford University; Queen Mary, University of London; Royal Holloway, University of London; The University of Sheffield; The University of Sussex; University of Wales Swansea; The University of Warwick; University College London.
For more information contact:
PPARC
Julia Maddock
PPARC Press Officer
Tel +44 (0)1793 442094
julia.maddock@pparc.ac.uk
CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Natalie Bealing MCIPR
RAL Public Relations Officer
Tel: +44 (0)1235 445484
n.d.bealing@cclrc.ac.uk
GridPP
Sarah Pearce
GridPP Dissemination Officer
Tel +61 418 997754
s.pearce@qmul.ac.uk
UKLight
Judy Redfearn
Communications Officer
Tel: +44 (0)117 954 5082
isjar@bris.ac.uk
CERN
Francois Grey
Tel: +41 22 767 1483
Francois.Grey@cern.ch
Notes for editors
The UK Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) works with the other UK research councils to set future priorities that meet UK science needs. It also operates three world-class research centres: the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire and the Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire. These world-class institutions support the research community by providing access to advanced facilities and an extensive scientific and technical expertise. RAL is one of the collaborating institutions in the GridPP project, the UK's contribution to the LHC Computing Grid project.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.
Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security, and builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. BNL is operated and managed for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and technology organization.
CCIN2P3, the Computing Center of the National Institute of nuclear physics and particle physics is located in Lyon, France. Its main mission is to provide computing resources and storage of experimental data to the physicists of the Institute involved in the major experiments of the discipline and particularly in international collaborations. In the field of grid computing, CCIN2P3 is one of the leaders of the French grid effort and is deeply involved in the main European grid projects for science.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is located in Batavia, Illinois, USA. Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., a consortium of 90 research universities, for the United States Department of Energy's Office of Science.
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, a member of the Helmholtz Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (HGF), constructs and operates the GridKa computing center for the German particle physics community and is the designated German Tier 1 for the LHC.
INFN-CNAF is the National Center for Research and Development in Technology, Computer Science and Data Transmission of INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), and is the major computing facility of the INFN grid infrastructure. INFN, Italy's national nuclear physics institute, supports, coordinates and carries out scientific research in sub-nuclear, nuclear and astroparticle physics and is involved in developing relevant technologies and a significant outreach program.
SARA is the National Center for Computing and Networking Services and NIKHEF is the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and High Energy Physics in the Netherlands. The two institutes have joined forces to become an important LHC data storage and analysis center. The Advanced Internet Research Group of the University of Amsterdam has strongly contributed to this Service Challenge in manpower and equipment.
Web sites of international grid projects involved in the service challenge:
LHC Computing Grid (LCG) project: http://www.cern.ch/lcg/
Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE): http://public.eu-egee.org/
Grid3: http://www.ivdgl.org/grid3/
GridPP: http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/
INFNGrid: http://grid.infn.it/
Open Science Grid (OSG): http://www.opensciencegrid.org/
The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) is the UK's strategic science investment agency. It funds research, education and public understanding in four broad areas of science - particle physics, astronomy, cosmology and space science.
PPARC is government funded and provides research grants and studentships to scientists in British universities, gives researchers access to world-class facilities and funds the UK membership of international bodies such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory. It also contributes money for the UK telescopes overseas on La Palma, Hawaii, Australia and in Chile, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh and the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility.
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