The Grid becomes a reality

This week, UK particle physicists will demonstrate the world’s
largest, working computing Grid. With over 6,000 computers at 78 sites
internationally, the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (LCG) is the
first permanent, worldwide Grid for doing real science. The UK is a
major part of LCG, providing more than 1,000 computers in 12 sites. At
the 2004 UK e-Science All Hands Meeting in Nottingham, particle
physicists representing a collaboration of 20 UK institutions will
explain to biologists, chemists and computer scientists how they reached
this milestone.

Particle physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC),
currently under construction at CERN in Geneva will produce around 15
Petabytes of data each year – 15 million, billion bytes. To deal with
this vast volume of data, particle physicists worldwide have been
building a computing Grid. By 2007, this Grid will have the equivalent
of 100,000 of today’s fastest computers working together to produce a
‘virtual supercomputer’, which can be expanded and developed as
needed. When the LHC experiments start in 2007, they are expected to
reveal new physics processes that were crucial in building the Universe
we see today, and shed light on mysteries such as the origin of mass.

Grid computing has been a target for IT developers and scientists for
more than five years. It allows scientists to access computer power and
data from around the world seamlessly, without needing to know where the
computers are. Analysis for particle physics can also be done on
conventional supercomputers, but these are expensive and in high demand.
Grid computing, in contrast, is constructed from thousands of cheap
units that can be increased to meet users’ needs. Like the web before
it, the Grid has the potential to impact on everyone’s computing.

GridPP, the UK’s particle physics Grid project, was set up by the
Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in 2000. On 1 September
this year the project reaches its halfway point, with the official end
of its first phase and the start of GridPP2. According to Dr Dave
Britton, the GridPP project manager, “The first half of the project
aimed to create a prototype Grid – which we’ve done very successfully.
Having proved that a Grid can work, we’re now focussed on developing a
large-scale stable, easy-to-use Grid integrated with other international
projects. This will let scientists tackle problems that are much larger
than those possible today.”

Dr Jeremy Coles of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is the GridPP
production manager, responsible for making sure the Grid works on a
day-to-day basis. He is giving the main GridPP talk in Nottingham, and
stresses, “There are a lot of challenges in front of us as we expand our
production Grid. In addition to the technical problems involved in
providing a well-monitored, stable Grid, we need to address wider
issues, in particular encouraging an open sharing of resources between
groups of users.”

In Nottingham, conference delegates will be able to see how the
particle physics Grid works. GridPP has developed a map that shows
computing jobs moving around LCG in real time, as they are distributed
to the most suitable sites on the Grid, run their programmes and then
return their results home. The map can be seen at
www.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk/e-science/projects/demo/index.html. Dr Dave
Colling, from Imperial College, London, whose team built the map, said,
“It can be difficult for people who have never seen a Grid working to
imagine what it does. Our map is an easy way to see how a Grid can let
scientists use resources all over the world, from their desktop. It’s
also useful for experts, who can easily see how well the Grid’s
working.”

Professor Tony Doyle, leader of GridPP, explained, “This is a great
achievement for particle physics and for e-Science. We now have a true
international working Grid, running more than 5,000 computing jobs at a
time. Our next aim is to scale up the computing power available by a
factor of ten, so that we’ll have 10,000 computers in the UK alone,
ready for the Large Hadron Collider in 2007”

Notes for editors

1. GridPP is a six year, GBP 33m 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

2. 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.

3. The UK All Hands e-Science Meeting will be held from 31st August
– 3rd September 2004. For full details see http://www.allhands.org.uk/

Contacts:

PPARC

Julia Maddock

PPARC Press Officer

+44 1793 442094

Julia.maddock@pparc.ac.uk

GridPP:

Dr. Sarah Pearce (at the All Hands Meeting)

GridPP Dissemination Officer

+44 (0)7870 404439

s.pearce@qmul.ac.uk

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 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 Laboratory for Particle
Physics (CERN), and the European Space Agency. 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, which includes the
Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank observatory.

PPARC’s Public Understanding of Science and Technology Awards Scheme
funds both small local projects and national initiatives aimed at
improving public understanding of its areas of science.