 So we're here at the Lenaro Connect and you have a special badge right here, and this is an accelerator, so who are you? So I'm David of Darkmallow. I work for Fermi National Exploration Laboratory Yes, and I'm fully based in Geneva, sir, and I work for a very beautiful LHC experiment called CMS and that's our detector. And yesterday you had the keynote here. What are we talking about? I was talking about using 64-bit ARM as a platform for high-energy physics and scientific computing in general So you're making all these ARM processors work in the CERN grid. What is your job? So my job is to make sure that our CMS experiment software works on various platforms Including 64-bit ARM and Power 8 together with 64-bit Intel platforms So I'm looking into new alternatives like 64-bit ARM and that's why we're here in the LHC So it's very important for these giant worldwide super computing grids to have low power, low-cost high performance, right? You're looking into multiple alternatives at this point and one of these alternatives could be 64-bit ARM processors And it particularly involves low power, high density systems So we can actually pack a lot of compute powers into our ads. So you want to get a higher throughput for what? So What's working so far? What have you been testing? Which platforms? So in particular, we are looking into new alternatives to the Intel that 64-bit ARM was mentioned before and also Power 8 systems And mostly currently focusing on 64-bit ARM So we have demonstrated that our software basically doing everything from raw data to analysis to reconstructions works We had done some initial looking into an numerical comparison and that looks very promising Most of the numbers at zero all the differences mostly at zero the sum of variations We showed the full stack working. So basically as our software working We managed to send a job from 64-bit Intel platform 64-bit ARM platform across the continent got the job Exituted we have remote reads and rise of files working. So more or less we demonstrated that 64-bit ARM is a potentially valuable architecture in WSG. That's worldwide IEC computing grid And you run a scientific Linux on there, right? Yes. Is this a CERN made Linux? What is the scientific Linux scientific Linux is a Rebuild of friend at enterprise Linux and it was developed by several universities and particularly now it's developed by CERN And I believe also thermal lab so special kind of a Linux that's optimal for sharing Big jobs between huge computing centers around the world We needed a common operating system between all the computer centers So that double HDD that LHC computing grid we have a compute power directly a CERN, but we also combine Compute power from 170 computer centers and we had to have something very common between them and the decision was to have Scientific Linux sent OS and ready enterprise Linux operating system. That's a common base for everything So there's lots of computing centers around the world. How many are there? So we using a hundred seventy computer center on the wall. I believe 170. Yes from 40 40 plus countries So what is the computing centers like a building like this full of computers? What is a computing center? It varies for definitions if you look at CERN We do have a 3.5 megawatts compute center visit tens of thousands of floors to floor It's a very old one build about 40 years ago and originally for supercomputers, but now it's mostly for their computer farms Then we have a tier once computer sites, which are also the bigger ones They have a lot more compute power. I also have tape storages So we actually send we have at least two copies of all the datas in those tier ones And then you go have a tier two computer sites. It's a majority of all the computer sites around WCG and those vary between the sides. It could be a big It could be actually small and then you have the last layer Which could be a very local very smallish computer center just several of the nodes, you know hundreds of floors Maybe a thousand of course, but you know for for the locally for specific physicists to do the analysis So there's lots of different Intel processors and from different years Yes, and few AMD processors correct and so far not so much other stuff The idea was I mean the whole double SCG I think but I believe it was actually born about 2000 years And we it was went for the commodity So we needed something ability to build once and run everywhere and that's why we got an original 32-bit Intel platform and finally actually moved to 64 bit Intel platform, but that's a common base again We have a common operating system and they have a common instruction set which currently is 64 bit Intel so right now the Higgs boson is found but need to analyze a lot of things and Find out where we from right and the Where life comes from? Exploding these atoms and all that stuff. So there's a lot of more Server that need to be bought in the next few years by all these computing centers around the world Yes, so they have to be sure to get the best power performance Price so one of the biggest challenge we currently facing is that we did our initial run which you called around one We did run from 2010 2012. That's the data. We used to actually say That CMS and Atlas to discover the Higgs boson and people actually received a novel price for that Now we had the long shutdown about 18 months when they actually update detector So we see and everything and now we're back to actually taking physics data and higher energy levels Then that's what you call the run two for another two to three years But we're gonna be operating for more than 10 years after that and the amount of data We're gonna get is astronomical. It's huge and it's impossible to process this with Intel, right? I'm just joking, but we need I mean the planet needs More computing at lower power Right, this is one of the things they're looking so a CMS Experiment particularly before casting within the next 15 years You're gonna have two to three orders of magnitude more data and they still need to process the data in the meaningful time So we're looking at alternative links you on fives GPUs Also, as as mentioned arm and power eight architectures of the potential alternatives So you've checked in here that in our connect. There's a lot of SOC guys a lot of different companies. You have meetings Yes, I have a lot of meetings. I've probably met most of the components which did announce 64-bit silicones and You are testing as many development boards as you can, right? That's what we're trying to do trying to get more. I'm trying. I'm I'm here in the now I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to get all the hardware you can get Test the latest and greatest stuff and but you prefer to get stuff. That's actually mass produced Possible, right? You don't want stuff. That's only just the development board, right? You can just buy a thousand development boards and put them in the grid and you want to buy real servers in order to Make a viable demonstrator cluster which we are building at Princeton University We want to use a production systems, you know People gonna buy a production system. So we want to have a production systems We're gonna have very familiar operating system that we have also and currently available on the PC computing grid Which again would be sent OS and enterprise Linux server for our developer preview So we are targeting those two operating systems at this point What is sent OS? Why is it so good to use? Are they very good guys to optimize for what you need? So sent OS is very similar to scientific linux again. It's a fullery build of red enterprise Linux Basically to move into a trademark They are there they are supporting you So we decided for a next-generation operating system to move to sent OS 7 and instead of having scientific Linux and Instead of rebuilding everything you're gonna have a special interest group as turn just so we're gonna producing just beneath bits Specific packages with the need for certain for structure, but again, you're gonna be now more relying on the community side. Nice. So CERN invented the web, right? It came out of there and then maybe CERN is gonna invent a 64-bit ARM server Like I mean somebody needs to come and say hey we need a large quantity and then somebody will just deliver the order We have to look into multiple silicon vendors We have to figure out what's the roadmaps and what direction everything going you have to talk to various hardware vendors We have to see if 64-bit ARM is gonna be a valuable tool for scientific computing. It's just the beginning We have to again. We have to discuss. We have to make collaborations We have to see if it's available and you know, you have to get all the people You have to get all the people excited and then get them to a specific direction and see where it goes And there's something like 12 billion ARM processors sold every year and going all these smartphones and But there's also a lot of people have desktops and Chromebooks and all that stuff and these CPUs could be used Maybe for helping you out or what? Yes? Could you connect somehow? So there are some projects that happen in LHC and where is LHC at home? And they're also now you're gonna as soon as you have CMS at home So this is kind of a specific project if your computer is sitting and silent at home For example during the night you could be doing some some good for certain and for example running simulations So we do have this kind of a project Is it the same computing stuff that happens in the grid or is different different pieces that people can do at home? It's similar. You download the platforms. You decide what you're gonna run Once you make a decision computer goes idle you can use both cycles to process our data But you wouldn't want people to just pollute the whole planet with the Intel CPUs everywhere, right? So it maybe it's smart if it runs on Android and runs on ARM and runs on all the all these things We have tested initially running our CMS SW reported its initiative with the two bits So C's and that was based on the x-menus 12 or 4 5 Tiger K1 Now you're looking in 64 bit on land. All right. So it's fun to talk with these the narrow guys Yes, definitely. This is the best place if you're looking for 64 bit arm This is the best place to come to and talk to people Cool. So let's go look for some SOCs over there