LHC@home

When, if ever, will LHC@home be crunching actual LHC data in WUs?

By the way, I use BOINC projects with my middle and high schools to get students interested in ongoing science beyond what\'s in their textbooks, labs, and state standards. Some of our students are very interested in the LHC and being able to crunch actual data is one way I hope to keep their interest beyond secondary education.

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When, if ever, will LHC@home be crunching actual LHC data in WUs?

In short, we won\'t be. The actual messages are over several threads, one is here.

Snippets for a quick read are below

Not a chance, a single dataset which a machine needs would be at least 1 gigabyte of data and your machine would have to download that before it could do anything else. We are TRYING to find something from the analysis of real data that will port but the big four have told us that the code is too, lets say, verbose.

and

We have a second project it\'s called the Grid. The LHC\'s computing needs are being fulfilled by that IF we can get something ported to BOINC we will but I reiterate we have no money. Also it\'s not just the download are you all willing to have large, hard drives, massive broadband connections and run only Scientific Linux (CERN edition) and not use your machines for anything else?

and

However this would require a person to port the software from the current Grid setup to BOINC and for the Grid software to be actually portable. Not only do we not have this person (see the money issue above) we have also been told that there is no way the applications the Grid runs are lightweight enough to be ported to BOINC. We keep prodding and asking about simulation applications/other experiments etc but nothing so far.

Hope this helps

Michael

Well, for a school the BW wouldn\'t necessarily be a problem. When I lived on the UNM dorms, they had like 3 T3 connections running in parallel, and the other college had an OC/3 line to the outside world. True a high school probably has less BW, though also fewer users; but they would have broadband of some kind, perhaps a T1 or better.

This said, a proprietary linux where the machine can\'t be used for anything else might pose a problem for a high school teacher as it would be hard to get dedicated purpose machines past the budgeting committee, whatever the school\'s BW might be.

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That\\\'s disappointing, but thanks.

Going forward without actual data form the LHC, how will LHC@home be benefiting CERN and particle physics in general?

LHC@home currently has the highest resource share on all my machines, but now knowing that we will not be crunching real data (I understand why) I am strongly tempted to put LHC@home at or near the bottom of my resources. I hope I\\\'m convinced otherwise.

Thanks again.

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So we did our duty and are no longer needed...?

So we did our duty and are no longer needed...?

There is talk of another project called Garfield.

Plus they will spend the winter preparing for the
High Energy beams so there may be more magnet tweaking
needed through sixtrack

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I just got some more work, so it appears we are not done yet! ;)

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Regards,
Bob P.

Me too, and it\'s a \"real\" WU not a 6 second one :D

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Hi there,
We still have some more tuning to do on the LHC and your help for that is appreciated.

We also have some other particle physics projects in the pipeline.

Alex

I got WUs! \\o/

But by the time I attached on my work computer, WUs were gone.

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Hi there,
We still have some more tuning to do on the LHC and your help for that is appreciated.

We also have some other particle physics projects in the pipeline.

Alex

Great !!!!!!!!

Any timeline for the new project ?
Do you have some more details about the new project ?

Is it my imagination or are these 1mil turn wu\'s taking longer than they used to? Seems like they\'re not spinning up as fast as they used to.

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A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory

So essentially what MSeery is saying is that this project is entirely useless and will never get work.

I have been subscribed to this \"project\" for an eternity and never got any work from it. If this project has nothing to do it serves no function and should be shut down. I think BOINC users has much more important things to do then waiting for never arriving work. And the most irritating thing about the LHC@Home is that there is no real information that this project is just a wall of air. you have to poke around in the forums before you get the message. I suggest this project gets something to to or disappear into a black hole.

This project gets simulations to run from CERN. If they have no simulations for us to run, there isn\'t much we can do about it, but hopefully the extent of the simulations we\'re asked to run will increase in the future. My computer was crunching away happily on LHC@Home WUs all last night - now we\'re out again, so I\'ve gone back to crunching for Milkyway@Home. There\'s no reason to limit yourself to one project, just give this one more priority for when there\'s work to do.

So essentially what MSeery is saying is that this project is entirely useless and will never get work.

I have been subscribed to this \"project\" for an eternity and never got any work from it. If this project has nothing to do it serves no function and should be shut down. I think BOINC users has much more important things to do then waiting for never arriving work. And the most irritating thing about the LHC@Home is that there is no real information that this project is just a wall of air. you have to poke around in the forums before you get the message. I suggest this project gets something to to or disappear into a black hole.

That is not what I\'m saying. The original question was about if we would be helping with analysing the data produced by the LHC, which we won\'t be. This project is about helping the scientists with the configurations for the beam, which in my opinion is an important and worthwhile function. There is also ongoing work being created for this. They are also looking at bring other physics projects into LHC@Home which hopefully will extend the usefulness of this project.

Hope this helps clarify matters.

Michael

Is it my imagination or are these 1mil turn wu\\\'s taking longer than they used to? Seems like they\\\'re not spinning up as fast as they used to.

I noticed that too. Quite longer, I may add. Around 33%

Well I dont mind if most of the work gets sent to me since in my 4 years here I get all the work they send me and finish it and send it back and then just look at the home page and the stats telling me there are thousands still in progress.

(like right now)

Server Status

Up, Out of work

24,292 workunits in progress

7 concurrent connections

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Volunteer Mad Scientist For Life

Well I dont mind if most of the work gets sent to me since in my 4 years here I get all the work they send me and finish it and send it back and then just look at the home page and the stats telling me there are thousands still in progress.

(like right now)

Server Status

Up, Out of work

24,292 workunits in progress

7 concurrent connections

Yeah, it would be nice if the max amount of WUs we get queued up at any time was less than it is now. I get the feeling there\'s a lot of slow computers out there chugging away at more WUs than they should have received. Not that their help isn\'t appreciated, but it would be more efficient with shorter queues as the faster PCs would be able to pick them up after finishing their first sets.

Yeah, it would be nice if the max amount of WUs we get queued up at any time was less than it is now. I get the feeling there's a lot of slow computers out there chugging away at more WUs than they should have received. Not that their help isn't appreciated, but it would be more efficient with shorter queues as the faster PCs would be able to pick them up after finishing their first sets.[/quote]


There are tricks to getting more work units. For one, you can suspend the work on other projects, thus concentrating your slow or fast computer on the LHC variety. (There are limits of course, due to perhaps getting work units that take hours to complete. The short ones usually go quickly enough to get a second helping.)

The LHC web site apparently went down a few times during the run on the available work units. If anyone noticed they could simply manually tell BOINC to try to get in touch during the day. (I admit that I micro-manage occasionally when I find LHC work units available!)

Such is life.