Gridfest: Launching the Grid
Tue 7 Oct 2008
Three weeks after the Large Hadron Collider's successful launch it was time for the LHC's computing Grid to be officially launched and unlike other popular festivals there was no chance of rain or mud at GridFest.
For 8 years now physicists and computer scientists across the globe have been building the Grid in anticipation of the data deluge from the LHC. With the official switch on of the LHC mere weeks before and the possibility of actual data to process from the experiment being just around the corner it was time for a baptism for the Grid.
The day long Gridfest was a celebration of all the work that has gone into the LHC, the Grid and the international collaboration that both required. Aimed at introducing the world to one of the biggest computing challenges that faces science the day had talks on the science, the engineering and the impact the Grid has had outside particle physics.
With an international collaboration like the Grid restricting the day to the CERN site would have not given the full flavour of the immense amount of work going on around the world. Just before lunch the assembled masses at CERN dialled into similar events around the world going on at the Grid's Tier 1 centres giving every major partner a chance to take part in the occasion. At the Tier 1 in the UK at the Rutherford Appleton laboratory it was John Gordon of GridPP who was chosen as the representative " The day went brilliantly, the LCG is ready in time plenty of time for LHC data and this is partly down to CERN for their leadership but also to the other Tier1s around the world and how it easy it has been working with them. So thanks to everyone and bring on the data"
Ian Bird who is the project leader for the LHC Computing Grid was really happy, especially with the international contributions on the day "Gridfest ran very smoothly and the video tour worked extremely well and gave a great feeling for the scope and global nature of the collaboration."
As the Grid waits for real data to come in from the LHC a lot of the sites are involved in the EGEE project lending their expertise and resources to numerous other disciplines and the data challenges posed by them.
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