RNP > RNP News > 2006 News

RNP supports the winning physicists’ team in Supercomputing 2006

Uerj and Unesp take part in an outstanding group in an international competition

Brazil, represented by Uerj (Rio de Janeiro State University) and Unesp (São Paulo State University) had, once again, a remarkable participation in the event Supercomputing 2006 (SC06), which took place in Florida, U.S.A, November 11-17.

The team was coordinated by California Technology Institute (Caltech) and formed by physicists from different countries - U.S.A, Korea, China and others. Among several competitors, the team reached the highest rates of data transmission in the bandwidth challenge. At the night of November 15th, during 30 minutes, the group maintained the highest rate of 17.7 gigabits per second, almost twice as much as the second place and a lot higher than the rate reached in 2005.

RNP, through Ipê network, and São Paulo Academic Network (Ansp) cooperated with the network infrastructure that enabled the connection of the Brazilian universities with the other participants.

This year the challenge was even bigger than in 2005. Besides testing the speed of data transfer, the participants had to integrate the data transmission with their applications at a high speed. That meant testing the performance of the data analysis programs of hundreds of computers, as well as the discs distributed among the participants. The experiment chosen by Uerj and Unesp was the CMS, one of the High Energy Physics detectors of the particles accelerator LHC, which is being built at European Center of Nuclear Research (Cern), in Switzerland. Currently, it is the world’s largest laboratory of the kind.

To Professor Alberto Santoro, coordinator of Uerj’s team of physicists, the challenge was really fruitful. “Now, besides data transmission and reception, we have to test the interactions, disk-to-disk, and analysis programs in extreme conditions. We need a significant breakthrough in technology so we can work comfortably when LHC is ready, at the end of 2007. Then we mustn’t make mistakes, lose packets. The loss of a single datum will compromise the whole analysis,” the professor explained. The complexity of the experiment explains the physicist’s concern: the four LHC detectors will generate 20 petabytes of data per year- the equivalent to about 300 million CD-ROMs.

Ipê network

Started one year ago, Ipê network integrates all 26 Brazilian states and the Federal District through a high performance network, created to support advanced research and the Brazilian educational system. Linked to other similar undertakings, Ipê network provides us, the ones who form the backbone, with an intercommunication capacity of up to 10 gigabits per second (almost 40 thousand times faster than a domestic connection of 256 kbps).

[RNP, 11.17.2006]