GridPP Management and Outreach
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen Mary University of London
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
'The Grid' is the next leap in computer interconnectivity. The Internet and the World Wide Web are increasingly an integral part of people's lives, helping the world share information and transfer data quickly and easily. In the same way as we now share files and facts over the global network of computers, in the future the Grid will let us share other things, such as processing power and storage space. The Grid is a practical solution to the problems of storing and processing the large quantities of data that will be produced by industry and the scientific communities over the next decade. Particle physicists are waiting for 2007 when a new particle accelerator opens in the world's largest particle physics laboratory, CERN. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the most powerful instrument ever built to investigate fundamental physics. Once this is fully functional the amount of data being produced will be massive. All this will be too much for one institution to handle so they need to share resources i.e. to use distributed computing. The Grid is built on the same Internet infrastructure as the web, but uses different tools. Middleware is one of these tools. In a stand alone computer the resources allocated to each job are managed by the operating system e.g. Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X. Middleware is like the operating system of a Grid, allowing users to access resources without searching for them manually. GridPP has developed middleware for the Grid, in collaboration with other international projects. Due to GridPP's open source policy, the middleware can evolve and be improved by the people who use it. Distributed computing has been available to scientists for some time but, in general, the use of different sites has to be negotiated by each scientist individually. They need a separate account on each system and jobs have to be submitted and results collected back by hand. Current distributed computing means the user has a lot of work to do to get their results. This is where the idea of Grid computing comes in. Middleware lets users simply submit jobs to the Grid without having to know where the data is or where the jobs will run. The software can run the job where the data is, or move the data to where there is CPU power available. Using the Grid and middleware, all the user has to do is submit a job and pick up the results. Acting as the gatekeeper and matchmaker for the Grid, middleware monitors the Grid, decides where to send computing jobs, manages users, data and storage. It will check the identity of the user through the use of digital certificates. A digital certificate is a file stored securely on a users computer which allows the Grid to correctly identify a user. The certificates are given to a user by the Certification Authority, with numerous steps to ensure the person applying is who they say they are. The middleware automatically extracts the users' identity from their digital certificate and uses this to log them in. This means users don't have to remember user names and passwords to log onto the Grid, they're automatically logged on using their Grid certificate. After this seamless identification process the middleware will find the most convenient and efficient places for the job to be run and organise efficient access to the relevant scientific data. It deals with authentication to the different sites being used, runs the jobs, keeps track of progress, lets the user know when the work is complete and transfers the result back.
People |
ORCID iD |
Stephen Lloyd (Principal Investigator) | |
Sarah Pearce (Researcher) |
Publications
Aad G
(2013)
Search for new phenomena in events with three charged leptons at s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2014)
Measurement of event-plane correlations in s NN = 2.76 TeV lead-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review C
Aad G
(2012)
Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
in Physics Letters B
Aad G
(2013)
Search for long-lived, multi-charged particles in pp collisions at s = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector
in Physics Letters B
Aad G
(2012)
Search for a light Higgs boson decaying to long-lived weakly interacting particles in proton-proton collisions at sqrt[s] = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector.
in Physical review letters
Aad G
(2012)
Search for top and bottom squarks from gluino pair production in final states with missing transverse energy and at least three b-jets with the ATLAS detector
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2014)
Search for dark matter in events with a Z boson and missing transverse momentum in p p collisions at s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2013)
Search for pair-produced massive coloured scalars in four-jet final states with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 7\ \mbox{TeV}$
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2012)
Combined search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in p p collisions at s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2013)
Measurement of the flavour composition of dijet events in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7\ \mbox{TeV}$ with the ATLAS detector
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2014)
Search for top quark decays t ? qH with H ? ?? using the ATLAS detector
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Aad G
(2012)
Search for a fermiophobic Higgs boson in the diphoton decay channel with the ATLAS detector
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2013)
Measurement of ZZ production in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{s}=7 $ TeV and limits on anomalous ZZZ and ZZ? couplings with the ATLAS detector
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Aad G
(2013)
Search for nonpointing photons in the diphoton and E T miss final state in s = 7 TeV proton-proton collisions using the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2013)
Search for microscopic black holes in a like-sign dimuon final state using large track multiplicity with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2013)
Dynamics of isolated-photon plus jet production in pp collisions at s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Nuclear Physics B
Aad G
(2012)
Search for resonant top quark plus jet production in t t ¯ + jets events with the ATLAS detector in p p collisions at s = 7 TeV
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2014)
Search for dark matter in events with a hadronically decaying W or Z boson and missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at vs=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector.
in Physical review letters
Aad G
(2014)
Measurement of the Z/? * boson transverse momentum distribution in pp collisions at s = 7 $$ \sqrt{s}=7 $$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Aad G
(2014)
Measurement of the low-mass Drell-Yan differential cross section at s $$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector
in Journal of High Energy Physics
Aad G
(2012)
Search for supersymmetry in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in v[s]=7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector.
in Physical review letters
Description | We have built a Grid to analyse data from the LHC at CERN and elsewhere. This enabled the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the fundamental scalar boson that is predicted to give mass to all other particles. |
Exploitation Route | Further research is required to establish if this is the Higgs Boson or if it is one of many (possibly Supersymmetric) Higgs Bosons. |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) |
URL | https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/AtlasPublic |
Description | Other disciplines have used our Grid for their own purposes. |
First Year Of Impact | 2008 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
Impact Types | Societal |