What is the universe made of?
Ordinary matter only makes up some four to five per cent – what about the rest?
The way to find out is to travel back in time, say scientists at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) by recreating what happened in the universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.
CERN has constructed a ‘time machine’: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will become operational in late 2007. This 27 kilometre circular tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva is the world’s largest and most complex scientific instrument. It is also the planet’s coldest refrigerator, equipped to operate at a temperature of minus 271°C, -- even colder than outer space.
By colliding two proton beams together at 99.9% of the speed of light, the CERN researchers believe they can replicate conditions that have not existed since the Big Bang, giving us a much greater understanding of the Universe.
CERN data centre
Once the LHC is in operation, CERN will account for one per cent of all the information generated on the planet: 15 million Gigabytes (15 Petabytes) of data each year.
To cope with this sea of data, CERN is pioneering the next generation of the Internet: the Grid. HP was the first commercial company to bring its technology to bear on CERN’s LHC Computing Grid (LCG) – a Grid of epic proportions. HP Labs and HP’s University Relations Programme are collaborating with CERN Openlab on software and hardware developments for the Grid.
Based on the same idea as the World Wide Web, which was invented at CERN in the beginning of the 90s, the Grid goes much, much further. It shares not only information but also computing power and storage. This means that scientists can log on to the Grid via their PC and have calculations performed by machines all across the planet.
The promise of Grid computing makes it one of the most talked-about ideas in enterprise IT and researchers at HP are working to bring the benefits of Grid computing to the corporate world.
Procurve 5400zl series switch
HP is rising to the challenge of developing a broadly accepted way of deploying and configuring software and hardware to run over a Grid. At CERN, researchers are testing HP applications like SmartFrog and Tycoon, as well as Glite middleware -- the next generation middleware for Grid computing.
A team at HP's UK Bristol Labs has built a framework – the Smart Framework for Object Groups, or SmartFrog – that provides rules for how resources on a Grid are configured, run and managed. Using SmartFrog, Openlab researchers have developed SmartDomains -- a virtual domain manager for Xen software -- which allows guest operating systems to run on top of a host operating system on the same computer hardware at the same time. HP and DreamWorks have already employed SmartFrog to configure a service that added fine detail to each frame of the animated film Shrek II. This process, thanks to HP technology, was completed in a fraction of the usual time.
HP’s Tycoon could one day become a sort of eBay for computing resources. A group of scientists are using it at CERN. Tycoon has the potential to democratize the Grid leading to cheaper and more abundant computing resources for everyone.
The principle is simple: create a system where users ‘rent’ processing power on an as-needed basis from a remote location rather than owning it themselves. With Tycoon, the exchange of processing power is dynamic and seamless, adapting automatically to competition in demand. Tycoon’s pay-per-use model could help provide incentive for commercial companies to contribute and share resources, eventually merging their Grids.
HP’s involvement in CERN is not philanthropic. HP is pioneering Grid computing's move into the enterprise market by developing products that can be used in Grids for business as well as scientific research. “The LCG has the potential to redefine the technical limits of grid computing,” said Arnaud Pierson, Programme Manager for HP University Relations in EMEA. “We believe that participating in CERN’s project is a great demonstration of how HP’s collaborations can ultimately bring value to our customers.”
CERN relies on ProCurve Networking by HP to provide the networking infrastructure that enables CERN scientists worldwide to share the information they need to grapple with questions about the our universe’s nature.
“As a leading scientific organisation which demands extremely high levels of performance and security within its IT infrastructure, CERN is continually evaluating innovative technologies to help facilitate our research and productivity,” said David Foster, Communications, Systems and Networking Group Leader at CERN.
ProCurve Switches connect the thousands of PCs at the heart of the LHC Computing Grid. “The decision to buy ProCurve was made based on the high performance, low total cost of ownership and increased network security we believe ProCurve’s products will bring to our organisation. Furthermore, it was imperative that we chose a solid partner; one that is dedicated to investing in high technology and one that is committed to long-term R&D partnerships,” added David Foster. As part of that relationship, CERN and HP-ProCurve have launched a research project to understand the behaviour of large computer networks (10,000 plus nodes) in High Performance Computing installations.
Printable version
