University of Copenhagen Deploys Force10 Networks in Tier One Termination Point for CERN's Large Hadron Collider

Telecomworldwire, June 10, 2008

TELECOMWORLDWIRE-10 June 2008-University of Copenhagen Deploys Force10 Networks in Tier One Termination Point for CERN's Large Hadron Collider(C)1994-2008 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com

Force10 Networks, a secure, reliable network builder, announced on 10 June that the Danish Centre for Scientific Computing at the University of Copenhagen (DCSC/KU) has deployed the TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers and the S-Series family of access switches at the foundation of Denmarks most powerful research supercomputer. Supporting more than 400 compute nodes with nearly 400 Terabytes of raw storage, the new supercomputer is part of the Nordic DataGrid Facility (NDGF) tier one termination point for CERNs Large Hadron Collider.

The NDGF termination point is one of only 10 such points for the CERN collider, and stores and processes the massive amounts of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider. Three research groups at the University of Copenhagen are using the power of the supercomputer and its tier one status to advance state-of-the-art research. The high energy physics research group includes physicists that are analysing data collected by two CERN experiments on the Large Hadron Collider, ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) and ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus).

The ALICE experiment is a collaboration of scientists from 94 institutes in 28 countries that will collide lead ions to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang. The experiment is designed to obtain data that will allow physicists to study a state of matter known as quark. ATLAS, a research group that includes physicists from 37 countries and 167 universities and laboratories, is a particle physics experiment that will search for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of high energy.

At the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, researchers will also study astrophysics using the power of the newest supercomputer. The universitys Chemistry department, which houses the supercomputer, will also utilize the computing capacity.

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