CERN Itanium system powers large Hadron collider

A LARGE Hadron Collider that has a circumference of 27 kilometres and to start operations in 2007 is being designed and tested using an Itanium 2 cluster, Intel said.

The chip cluster is being used to run simulations of the heat flow around underground particle detectors.

CERN has told Intel that the system can export data at a rate of 600MB per second for 10 days to its sister labs around the world.

The Large Hadron Collider grid will have to distribute data at 1,500MB a second over a decade, with the raw bits and bits being analysed at 150 computing centres worldwide.

This data includes images of protons colliding head on inside the particle detectors at slightly less than the speed of light.

Intel said that the data and images will be studied by particular boffins "in search of new particles and phenomena that provide clues to the origin of the Universe." Intel doesn't necessarily believe that God made the universe, it appears.

The data during one year of operation of the large Hadron cluster will exceed 15 Petabytes - which Intel reckons is one per cent of the worldwide production of information today in digital and non digital forms.

The whole cunning caboodle is a part of CERN Open Lab, which is an industrial partnership with IBM, Intel, HP, Oracle and Enterasys. µ

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