CERN PHOTOWALK 2010 - Computer Centre - Veronika McQuade
(Image: CERN)
  1. science
  2. computing
  3. grid
  4. The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG)

The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG)

Dealing with the LHC data deluge

The mission of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) is to provide global computing resources for the storage, distribution and analysis of the data generated by the LHC.

WLCG combines about 1.4 million computer cores and 1.5 exabytes of storage from over 170 sites in 42 countries. This massive distributed computing infrastructure provides more than 12 000 physicists around the world with near real-time access to LHC data, and the power to process it.

It runs over 2 million tasks per day and, at the end of the LHC’s LS2, global transfer rates exceeded 260 GB/s.

These numbers will increase as time goes on and as computing resources and new technologies become ever more available across the world.

CERN provides about 20% of the resources of WLCG.

The EGL application provides a close-to-real-time (refreshed every ten minutes) visualisation of the WLCG grid activity. It shows graphically information covering data movement for both Monte Carlo (simulation) production and Tier 0 export, and additional information about jobs running on the ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ALICE grids. (Video: João Pequenão Antunes/Mayank Sharma/CERN)