Large Hadron Collider computing grid launched

Streaming the equivalent of 300m DVDs a year

6 October 2008 13:45 GMT / By Katie Scott

Its creation may have been controversial, and people may have believed that when it was turned on, the world was going to end, but no.

The Large Hadron Collider has been churning away in CERN (although is currently off thanks to a fault), and the team behind it has launched a computer grid that will process the data that the collider produces.

In fact, the computing grid to claimed to be one of the world's largest and is capable of streaming the equivalent of three million DVDs a year.

It comprises more than 100,000 processors, and will allow 7000 scientists in 33 countries to process 15 petabytes of data each year.

This is the amount of data that the particle accelerator at the Cern laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland, will produce.

The data will be sent to 11 sites using 10Gbps connections.

The grid has so far cost CERN €100m for staff and materials.

Speaking to ZDNet.co.uk's sister site, silicon.com, director general of Cern Robert Aymar said: "About half the world's scientists will be looking at this data. It is a true world effort".

Full tags

Software, Hardware, Large Hadron Collider