GridPP is a collaboration of particle physicists and computer scientists from the United Kingdom and

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

. They manage and maintain a distributed

computing grid Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from c ...

across the UK with the primary aim of providing resources to particle physicists working on the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008, in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists, ...

(LHC) experiments at CERN. They are funded by the UK's

Science and Technology Facilities Council The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is a United Kingdom government agency that carries out research in science and engineering, and funds UK research in areas including particle physics, nuclear physics, space science and astr ...

. The collaboration oversees a major computing facility called the Tier1 at the

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is one of the national scientific research laboratories in the UK operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). It began as the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory, merged with the At ...

(RAL) along with the four Tier 2 organisations of ScotGrid, NorthGrid, SouthGrid and LondonGrid (formerly LT2). The Tier 2s are geographically distributed and are composed of computing clusters at multiple institutes. As of 2012 the GridPP infrastructure spans 18 UK institutions and is major partner in the UK's National Grid Initiative as a part of the

European Grid Infrastructure EGI (originally an initialism for European Grid Infrastructure) is a federation of computing and storage resource providers that deliver advanced computing and data analytics services for research and innovation. The Federation is governed by i ...

Background

The original GridPP plan was drawn up in late 2000 to provide the UK's contribution to the LHC Computing Grid and the EuropeanDataGrid project (now the

). The drive behind these projects was to provide researchers working on the LHC experiments with suitable computing resources and to extend the use of the technology to other communities. The first GridPP proposal was accepted by PPARC, at the time the UK funding council responsible for funding particle physics related projects, and the collaboration officially began on 1 September 2001 with £17m of funding. During this first phase of GridPP (2001 to 2004) the collaboration built the UK testbed, a working prototype for a grid that was linked to other similar systems around the world. In preparation for its use as a production infrastructure it analysed real data from a wide variety of experiments being run around the world in different institutions. In 2004 it was extended until September 2007 to bring it up to the proposed LHC switch on date. By 2007 GridPP was a fully functioning production service but the LHC switch on was still a year away so in September 2007 it received a further extension from STFC, receiving £30m of funding until March 2011.

Current state of the project

GridPP is in its fourth phase (2011–2014) having received more funding from th
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
to support the LHC experiments and other users. In late 2011 the project is providing over 29,000

CPUs A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...

and 25,000 TB of storage to the worldwide grid infrastructure.

Members

All of the UK universities and institutions with researchers working on the LHC are members. As of 2011 the list is as follows:

ScotGrid

ScotGrid is based across 3 main sites and primarily supports on-going research within the field of Particle Physics. The entire environment is monitored, maintained and developed by dedicated teams at each site, to ensure a fully operational system is available to the end user communities. *

Durham University Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament (UK), Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by r ...

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

NorthGrid

Lancaster University Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new univer ...

University of Liverpool The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is a Public university, public research university in Liverpool, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool, Victoria University (United Kingdom), Victoria University, it received Ro ...

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Fir ...

SouthGrid

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

* The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory *

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...

LondonGrid

LondonGrid is a joint collaboration of 5 institutes in the London region to provide high performance computing resources to the high energy physics community. * Brunel University, West London *

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

Queen Mary, University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University of London. Today, ...

Royal Holloway, University of London Royal Holloway, University of London (RH), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public university, public research university and a constituent college, member institution of the federal University of London. It ...

Research supported by GridPP

Currently supported

GridPP supports many disciplines and projects. This is a list of the different experiments or projects that actively use GridPP resources.

LHC experiments

GridPP was originally created to support the experiments based at CERN using the LHC. The 4 main experiments supported are: *

ALICE Alice may refer to: * Alice (name), most often a feminine given name, but also used as a surname Literature * Alice (''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''), a character in books by Lewis Carroll * ''Alice'' series, children's and teen books by ...

ATLAS An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

CMS CMS may refer to: Computing * Call management system * CMS-2, a programming language implemented for and used by the United States Navy * Code Morphing Software, a technology used by Transmeta * Collection management system for a museum coll ...

LHCb The LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment is a particle physics detector collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. LHCb specializes in the measurements of the parameters of CP violation in the interactions of b- and c-hadro ...

High energy physics

Alongside the experiments at the LHC GridPP also supports other international

high energy physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and neutrons, while the stu ...

experiments. These include: * CLIC *

MICE A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

SNO+ SNO+ is a physics experiment designed to search for neutrinoless double beta decay, with secondary measurements of proton–electron–proton (''pep'') solar neutrinos, geoneutrinos from radioactive decays in the Earth, and reactor neutrinos. It ...

* SuperB * T2K * NA62 experiment at CERN

Physics

* PhenoGrid a UK project investigating

Phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...

* UKQCD — a UK project investigating

Quantum Chromodynamics In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the study of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type of ...

ITER ITER (initially the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ''iter'' meaning "the way" or "the path" in Latin) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject aimed at creating energy through a fusion process s ...

Other disciplines

GridPP, through the European Grid Infrastructure and its own efforts, supports many non-physics research disciplines. * The MoSSaiC project, investigating the management of landslide hazards in the Tropics * The UK's National eInfrastructure for Social Simulation's GENESIS project which uses the grid infrastructure to simulate a populations in cities and regions

in-silico In biology and other experimental sciences, an ''in silico'' experiment is one performed on a computer or via computer simulation software. The phrase is pseudo-Latin for 'in silicon' (correct ), referring to silicon in computer chips. It was ...

. * The ENROLLER providing language and literature researchers access to text collections and computing resources.

Previously supported

Other disciplines

* WISDOM a French-based project looking at cures for avian flu and malaria. * PEGASUS – Particle Physicists Engagement with Grids: A Socio-technical Usability Study, a sociology study of the collaboration carried out by the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

which resulted in a framework of qualifying guidance for others engaged in developed grids as well as 15 papers, 4 posters and used in 3 MSc dissertations. * Econophysica – A small company who worked with researchers at Queen Mary, University of London looking at mathematical models for commodity trading. The work with GridPP received funding from the STFC Mini PIPPS scheme to look into the feasibility of their algorithmic trading platform being deployed on the Grid.PIPSS Awards – 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008, Feasibility of the Grid Based Algorithmic Trading Platform

Related projects

* LHC Computing Grid *

* National Grid Service

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.gridpp.ac.uk
The UK's National Grid Initiative website
Academic computer network organizations College and university associations and consortia in the United Kingdom E-Science European Union and science and technology Grid computing Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom Queen Mary University of London Science and Technology Facilities Council