LHC@home

Also does anybody from the LHC read this or are you all too busy doing that more important science.

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I think they're doing all the good stuff and crunching onsite for more immediate LHC data results, and they just occasionaly throw us a loaf of bread to entertain themselves with digital mayhem, or to see if BOINC is still working.

Maybe when they're ready to start releasing some serious WU output from the LHC 24/7/365 I'll be ready with an ATI Firestream or Nvidia Tesla card. So I hope LHC will support both ATI OpenCL and Nvidia CUDA, as well as the main CPU.

Just got my first ever WU today, accidentally killed it with the screen saver, lost it for good, oh well it was just a bread crumb, it bounced off my beak.

I think they\\\'re doing all the good stuff and crunching onsite for more immediate LHC data results, and they just occasionaly throw us a loaf of bread to entertain themselves with digital mayhem, or to see if BOINC is still working.

Maybe when they\\\'re ready to start releasing some serious WU output from the LHC 24/7/365 I\\\'ll be ready with an ATI Firestream or Nvidia Tesla card. So I hope LHC will support both ATI OpenCL and Nvidia CUDA, as well as the main CPU.

Just got my first ever WU today, accidentally killed it with the screen saver, lost it for good, oh well it was just a bread crumb, it bounced off my beak.

Data from the LHC particle collision experiments will probably never make it here. There are too many technical hurdles to overcome in adapting the analysis tools to BOINC, and CERN already has their own grid specifically designed for that kind of work. What we may see is further rounds of SixTrack beam simulations to assist in performing future upgrades to the LHC, much in the same way that the beam simulations we ran previously helped to design and build it. Even so, I wouldn\'t count on GPU support, as the project to date hasn\'t even been able to produce a Linux version of the current SixTrack app - much to the chagrin of many hopeful volunteers.

However, there is a project in alpha right now that hopes to provide a way for the LHC data to be crunched by BOINC hosts through the use of a virtual machine running the same OS and analysis tools as the CERN grid. Check out the LHC++@Home Web site for more info.


-- Tony D.

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