The GridPP at Royal Holloway |
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In 2001, a consortium of 18 UK universities plus CERN and RAL formed the GridPP Collaboration to build a Grid for particle physics in the UK, primarily, though not exclusively, for analysing data from the LHC at CERN. The GridPP project currently has three main areas: building the underlying computing infrastructure, computers, disks, network etc; writing the software - called middleware, that will allow transparent use of this infrastructure; and development of the particle physics applications that will run on this Grid. |
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As part of the computing infrastructure, the GridPP is developing a prototype UK Regional Centre at RAL and four smaller regional centres in Scotland, Northern England, Southern England and London. The UK centre is being developed around the existing robotic data store with new disk servers and computers, while the regional centres are using existing computing facilities. |
 Artists diagram demonstrating Grid concept (copyright CERN) |
There are two categories of particle physics applications being developed: those for the future LHC experiments using the Grid for the generation of very large quantities of simulated data; and those analysing real data from existing experiments. The GridPP Grid will soon be expanded to include all particle physics institutes in the UK and already being prepared is the second three-year phase to move from the current prototype Grid to a production quality Grid ready for LHC turn-on. |
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Extract
taken from Frontiers: issue 16 |
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