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Content about WLCG

May 15, 2013
CERN Computer Centre expands

A significant expansion of the CERN Computer Centre was inaugurated last week. The project, for which construction work began in April 2011, has seen the addition of a new computer room housing 90 new racks of servers, enabling critical systems to be decoupled from those deemed non-critical.

May 1, 2013
The Large Hadron Collider's worldwide computer

Behind the excellent results from CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) lies the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid – a giant that never sleeps. Find out more in this article from the CERN Courier...

March 6, 2013
The world is our calculator

Last month, CERN hosted two Google+ Hangouts on the topic of the Worldwide LHC Grid, or WLCG for short.

The first, 'LHC and the Grid — The world is our calculator', can be watched in full, here...

 

February 20, 2013
Big data, big grid

With the news that the CERN data center has recorded over 100 petabytes of physics data over the last 20 years, you may be wondering how on Earth all of this  gets analyzed. The answer: The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, or 'WLCG' for short.

December 19, 2012
Our highlights of 2012

With the year almost over we look back at the debates, controversies, and achievements in the world of science and computing. Read our countdown of iSGTW’s most popular stories of 2012. 

August 29, 2012
A second life in Africa

On 30 August, 220 computer servers from CERN will start a journey to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), in Ghana, Africa. This will provide a new computing center for KNUST and enable African students to participate  in simulations of LHC data.

August 15, 2012
How grid computing helped CERN hunt the Higgs

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past month, you're almost certainly aware that on 4 July scientists at CERN announced they had discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson. However, what you may not know is that distributed computing played a crucial role in the race towards this discovery.

August 1, 2012
Hear a Higgs through its data

The Higgs boson-like particle has been turned into music. Not only is this a way to bridge the gap between science and the public, but it could enable researchers to hear their work in a new light.

July 11, 2012
The higgs, the history, and the grid

Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider have identified a new particle that is consistent with the Higgs boson. Confidence levels are as high as 5.0 sigma. This means the probability of the background alone fluctuating up by this amount or more is about one in three million. The director general of CERN, Rolf Heuer, said this global success was only made possible because of the experiments, infrastructure, and grid computing.

May 16, 2012
The search for 'new physics' - a view from the frontline

A PhD student based at the National Institute for Subatomic Physics (NIKHEF), in the Netherlands, wrote an opinion feature of her experience in using the grid to help search for new physics in LHCb detector data and to answer why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe today.

March 7, 2012
A big cloud for big science

Helix Nebula - the Science Cloud is a new European collaboration to provide computing platforms to propel science. As a result, research should be faster and cheaper to perform, such as setting up an earthquake analysis system in a day instead of a month or simpler analysis of large genomes from mammals.

February 29, 2012
Seven innovative ways to cool a scientific computer

As computer chips get smaller and faster, they’re getting hotter and hotter. Typically, almost 40% of a data center’s electricity bill is because of its cooling equipment.

To help reach the exaflop barrier and beyond, some data centers are investing in better cooling than current standard technology. We’ve taken a look at seven promising methods that will help scientific e-infrastructures stay cool.

December 21, 2011
Happy 10th Birthday, WLCG!

This year, the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) turned 10. It was September 2001 when the idea was concieved of and approved by the CERN council to handle the large volumes of data.

September 28, 2011
48-hour grid security challenge

A team from the Netherlands has mimicked a global attack on the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid, and released their results at a technical forum in Lyon, France, last week.