LHC@home is a
volunteer computing
Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which people donate their computers' unused resources to a research-oriented project, and sometimes in exchange for credit points. The fundamental idea behind it is that a modern desktop co ...
project researching
particle physics
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) an ...
that uses the
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC, pronounced – rhymes with "oink") is an open-source middleware system for volunteer computing (a type of distributed computing). Developed originally to support SETI@home, it beca ...
(BOINC) platform.
The project's computing power is utilized by physicists at
CERN in support of the
Large Hadron Collider and other experimental particle accelerators.
The project is run with the help of over 5,400 active volunteer users contributing more than 10,000 computers processing at a combined 61
teraFLOPS .
The project is
cross-platform
In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...
, and runs on a variety of
computer hardware configurations.
Applications
The LHC@home project currently runs four applications—Atlas, CMS, SixTrack, and Test4Theory—which deal with different aspects of research conducted in LHC like calculating particle beam stability and simulating proton collisions. Atlas, CMS, and Test4Theory use
VirtualBox
Oracle VM VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and Innotek VirtualBox) is a type-2 hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation.
VirtualBox was originally created by Innotek GmbH, which was acquired by S ...
, an
x86 virtualization
x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU.
In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware-as ...
software package.
Atlas
''Atlas'' uses volunteer computing power to run simulations of the
ATLAS experiment
ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of ...
. It can be run in VirtualBox or natively on Linux.
Beauty
''Beauty'' (LHCb
) compared the decay of
bottom quark
The bottom quark or b quark, also known as the beauty quark, is a third-generation heavy quark with a charge of − ''e''.
All quarks are described in a similar way by electroweak and quantum chromodynamics, but the bottom quark has exce ...
s () and bottom antiquarks (), which also known as ''beauty quarks''. The participation of volunteers in the application was suspended indefinitely on 19 November 2018.
CMS
The ''CMS'' application (formerly a standalone project called ''CMS@Home'') allows users to run simulations for the
Compact Muon Solenoid
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment is one of two large general-purpose particle physics detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland and France. The goal of the CMS experiment is to investigate a wide range ...
experiment on their computers.
SixTrack
''SixTrack'' was first introduced as a beta on 1 September 2004 and a record 1000 users signed up within 24 hours. The application went public, with a 5000 user limit, on September 29 to commemorate CERN's 50th anniversary. Currently there is no user limit and qualification.
''SixTrack'' was developed by Frank Schmidt of the CERN Accelerators and Beams Department and produces results that are essential for verifying the long term stability of the high energy particles in the LHC. Lyn Evans, head of the LHC project, stated that ''"the results from SixTrack are really making a difference, providing us with new insights into how the LHC will perform"''.
Test4Theory
The ''Test4Theory'' application allows volunteers to run simulations of high energy particle collisions on their home computers. These simulations use theoretical models based on the
Standard Model of particle physics, and are calculated using
Monte Carlo methods. The theoretical models have adjustable parameters and the aim is that a given set of parameters (called a "tune") will fit the widest possible range of experimental results.
The Test4Theory results are therefore submitted to a database which contains a very wide set of experimental data from many accelerator experiments worldwide, including of course experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. The Theory Unit at CERN runs th
MCPLotsproject, which run the database and the theoretical fitting process.
See also
*
Citizen Cyberscience Centre The Citizen Cyberscience Centre (CCC) is an organization for volunteer computing formed as a partnership between CERN, UNITAR, and the University of Geneva.
In August 2011, a new version of the BOINC-based volunteer computing project LHC@home bega ...
*
List of volunteer computing projects
This is a comprehensive list of volunteer computing projects; a type of distributed computing where volunteers donate computing time to specific causes. The donated computing power comes from idle CPUs and GPUs in personal computers, video game co ...
*
Worldwide LHC Computing Grid
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
Official BOINC portalOfficial SixTrack application website*
LHC@Home– BOINC Radio - Project Brief
Applications
AtlasBeautyCMSSixTrackTest4Theory
{{DEFAULTSORT:LHC at home
E-Science
Free science software
Large Hadron Collider
Science in society
Volunteer computing projects