Every time a physicist at CERN smashes protons together inside the Large Hadron Collider, a torrent of data floods out—enough to fill thousands of DVDs every second. This grant funds the UK’s share of the computing grid that catches, stores, and analyses that data. Without this infrastructure, UK particle physicists would have no way to process the LHC’s output. The grid—a distributed network of high-throughput computers and storage—turns raw collision data into results that can reveal new particles or test the fundamental laws of physics. The UK’s contribution currently runs 50,000 computing cores and more than 35 petabytes of storage, and this project keeps that service running at production quality through 2020. This is fundamental science. It does not aim to build a product or solve an immediate practical problem. It enables discovery—the kind that, in the past, has led to technologies like the World Wide Web, medical imaging, and high-performance computing methods now used in drug design and climate modelling. If the grid works reliably, UK physicists stay competitive in the global hunt for what matter is really made of.
View original technical description
This proposal, submitted in response to the 2014 invitation from STFC, aims to provide and operate a computing Grid for the exploitation of LHC data in the UK. The success of the current GridPP Collaboration will be built upon, and the UK's response to production of LHC data in the period April 2016 to March 2020 will be to ensure that there is a sustainable infrastructure providing "Distributed Computing for Particle Physics" We propose to operate a distributed high throughput computational service as the main mechanism for delivering very large-scale computational resources to the UK particle physics community. This foundation will underpin the success and increase the discovery potential of UK physicists. We will operate a production-quality service, delivering robustness, scale and functionality. The proposal is fully integrated with international projects and we must exploit the opportunity to capitalise on the UK leadership already established in several areas. The Particle Physics distributed computing service will increasingly be integrated with national and international initiatives. The project will be managed across various domains and will deliver the UK's commitment to the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) and ensure that worldwide activities directly benefit the UK. By 2015, the UK Grid infrastructure will have expanded in size to 50,000 cores, with more than 35 PetaBytes of storage. This will enable the UK to exploit, in an internationally competitive way, the unique physics potential of the LHC.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know