is the first experiment at CERN that connects a supercomputer directly to a high precision physics experiment. NA48 will study so-called
CP violation, a phenomenon that is believed to be at the origin of the observed dominance of matter over anti-matter in the universe today. The essential problem of the experiment is that a very large number of physics events must be recorded, while the useful events are very rare and difficult to extract. High sustained data rates - up to 20 MegaBytes per second - must be handled continuously for several weeks.
Large data volumes are sent via a direct optical link over 5 kilometres from the experiment directly into the CS-2. The data must be stored using high-end tape recording and automated library technologies, while physicists at the same time need quasi real-time analysis of the data to have a fast quality feedback to control the sensitive items of the detector.
This is most of all true for the
liquid krypton calorimeter, a very high tech device that consists of 13,000 cells in which the energy of the particles is measured. The CS-2 will provide a continuous real-time calibration of the 13,000 cells, thus enabling the necessary high precision of the device.
Related Images
NA48 On-Line processing on CS-2
NA48 detector
NA 48 experiment
Liquid Krypton Calorimeter
CERN laboratories
Related Documents
L. Bertolotto et al.
"Feasibility studies for a High Energy Physics MC program on Massive Parallel Platforms"
in:
CHEP '94, Computing in High Energy Physics Conference, San Francisco, 1994, ed. S.C. Loken (postscript file).
B. Panzer-Steindel
"Parallel I/O measurements on a SparcCenter and a Meiko CS-2"
in: CHEP '94, San Francisco, 1994, ed. S.C. Loken (postscript file).
J. Apostolakis et al.
"First Results from the Parallelisation of CERN's NA48 Simulation Program"
in: HPCN'94, High Performance Computing and Networking Conference, Munich, 1994, v.1, eds. W. Gentzsch and U. Harms (Springer, Berlin, 1994)
F. Gagliardi
"Remote Data-Recording and Processing for NA48"
in: CHEP '95, Computing in High Energy Physics, Rio de Janeiro, 1995.
J. Apostolakis et al.
"General-purpose parallel computing in a High-Energy Physics experiment at CERN"
in: HPCN '96, (Lecture Notes in Computer Science no 1067), Brussels, 1996, eds. H. Liddell, A. Colbrook, B. Hertzberger and P. Sloot (Springer, Berlin, 1996), presented by P. Calafiura.
P. Calafiura
"Real-Time and Off-line Applications in the GPMIMD2 project", AIHENP96, Lausanne, September 96.
G. Wirrer
"A Storage Management System for NA48 Central Data Recording", NA48 Internal note, March 1996.
P. Calafiura, G. Wirrer
"Data Management in 1997", NA48 Internal note, October 1996.
derived from KA,
original version
December 4, 1996