Royal
Holloway physicists connect up to the grid
The Physics Department at Royal Holloway,
Supplied by Compusys and funded by SRIF*, the PC Farm
consists of 75 PCs linked to similar PC Farms in the UK,
creating a ‘supercomputer’ capable of dealing with over 10 petabytes of
data – the equivalent of more than 20 million CDs.
Deployed by a collaboration of UK Universities and
research laboratories, and CERN*, the PC Farms will give scientists access to
a computing grid with power equivalent to 70,000 of today’s fastest
computers. In what will eventually become a worldwide operation, scientists
will be able to harness storage, software, processing power and programs from
computers across the globe. In the future, this computing grid could become
accessible to the public in the same way as the internet, allowing us to tap
into vast amounts of processing power and storage, and providing almost
limitless commercial opportunities.
Royal Holloway’s Centre for Particle Physics will use
the technology to facilitate its research using the world’s largest particle
accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is being constructed at
CERN, in
Dr Simon George, Research Officer at the Centre said:
"Particle physics experiments are a challenging testing ground for new
computing technology - within a few years it will be regarded as a common
feature of everyday life as was clearly illustrated with the World Wide Web,
initially developed at CERN."
The LHC, located in a huge underground cavern on the
France/Switzerland border, will accelerate and collide protons to produce
subatomic debris, enabling scientists to examine the composition of rare
particles and providing an insight into how the universe was formed. The
network of PC Farms across the world will provide the means to examine
millions of such collisions.
The Royal Holloway Centre for Particle Physics is
working closely with four other London-based universities on the project.
These universities have been funded by the SRIF award for
To find out more about Grid PP visit
www.gridpp.ac.uk/
*
CERN
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research is the world’s largest
particle physics research centre, based near
*
SRIF The
Science Research Investment Fund
is a joint initiative by the Office of Science and Technology (OST) and the
Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The SRIF initiative was first
announced in July 2000.
* PPARC
The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council is the
*
HEFCE The Higher Education Funding Council for
* SHEFC
The Scottish Higher Education Funding Council was established in
June 1992 as a non-departmental
public body responsible to the Scottish Executive. The Council provides
financial support for teaching, research and associated activities in Scottish
higher education institutions.
ENDS
Images
of the PC Farm and members of the Centre for Particle Physics are available on
request.
Royal
Holloway,
Christine Long
Press & PR Officer
01784 443967, christine.long@rhul.ac.uk
Vicky
Cousins
Assistant Press & Comms Officer
01784
414480, victoria.cousins@rhul.ac.uk
Editor’s
Notes
Ranked
as the second best teaching department in the country by The Guardian, The
Department of Physics
at Royal Holloway is one of the major centres for Physics teaching and
research in the
The
Centre for Particle Physics at Royal Holloway
has a varied programme of research activities at a number of international
research centres across the world. Its members are currently working on four
major experimental projects: the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, the BABAR
experiment at Stanford in
The
Centre has strong scientific links with many other laboratories in the