| Information about GridKa |
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| The European research centre CERN is currently setting up the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Starting in 2007, four huge subterranean detectors will record the trajectories of elementary
particles being created by the collision of accelerated protons or atomic nuclei. These four
LHC experiments will produce about 8.000.000.000.000.000 Byte (8 PetaByte = 8 million GigaByte)
of data per year. Additionally, about 4 PetaByte of data will be simulated every year. |
| Even when considering optimistic forecasts concerning the evolution of processor speeds and
online storage, one single computing centre will not be able to provide enough capacities for a
few thousand scientists worldwide to analyse this huge amount of data. According to the LHC computing
model it is thus planned to build a few regional computing centres in several countries and to
connect them with high speed networks. Grid software shall automatically manage the data and work
load distribution and provide a transparent and unique view of the connected resources. |
| More than 40 groups of German nuclear and particle physicists participate in the development
and later analysis of the 4 LHC experiments as well as in 4 already operating high energy physics
experiments. They have chosen the
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) as the location for the German regional
computing centre. During the next few years the
Steinbuch Centre for Computing (SCC) will set up and
operate the |