Large Hadron Collider
Computing and analysis facilities

Data produced by LHC, as well as LHC-related simulation, were estimated at 200 petabytes per year.

The LHC Computing Grid was constructed as part of the LHC design, to handle the massive amounts of data expected for its collisions. It is an international collaborative project that consists of a grid-based computer network infrastructure initially connecting 140 computing centres in 35 countries (over 170 in more than 40 countries as of 2012). It was designed by CERN to handle the significant volume of data produced by LHC experiments, incorporating both private fibre optic cable links and existing high-speed portions of the public Internet to enable data transfer from CERN to academic institutions around the world. The LHC Computing Grid consists of global federations across Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas.

The distributed computing project LHC@home was started to support the construction and calibration of the LHC. The project uses the BOINC platform, enabling anybody with an Internet connection and a computer running Mac OS X, Windows or Linux to use their computer's idle time to simulate how particles will travel in the beam pipes. With this information, the scientists are able to determine how the magnets should be calibrated to gain the most stable "orbit" of the beams in the ring. In August 2011, a second application (Test4Theory) went live which performs simulations against which to compare actual test data, to determine confidence levels of the results.

By 2012, data from over 6 quadrillion (6 × 10) LHC proton–proton collisions had been analysed. The LHC Computing Grid had become the world's largest computing grid in 2012, comprising over 170 computing facilities in a worldwide network across more than 40 countries.
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