Technology and Collaboration:
Researching the development and use of
Grid infrastructure for the CERN particle
accelerator laboratory.
Dr Will Venters & Dr Yingqin Zheng
www.pegasusresearch.org.uk
Information Systems Group
The Pegasus Team

Three year project funded by the EPSRC programme: “Usability challenges
from e-science” (EP/D049954/1)

A research in progress!
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Members:

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

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Dr Will Venters (Lecturer & PI – LSE)
Dr Tony Cornford (Senior Lecturer – LSE)
Dr Mark Lancaster (Senior Lecturer in PP – UCL)
Dr Yingqin Zheng (Research Officer -LSE)
Avgousta Kyriakidou (PhD student -LSE)
Advisory Group:

Prof. Tony Doyle, Prof. Steve Lloyd,
Dr Elaine Ferneley, Prof. Wanda Orlikowski,
Dr Susan Scott,
Will
Yingqin
Tony
Mark
Avgousta
Who are they?

Particle Physics sees itself as an elite.

“Particle physics is the unbelievable in pursuit of the
unimaginable.” (Guardian)

“All science is either physics or stamp collecting” (Rutherford
1962)

“Promethean heroes of the search for the truth… They bring
news of another world.. the extraordinary scale and
costliness of much physics research if anything reinforces its
cultural value.” (Traweek 1988)

“The culture is built on beliefs in individual genius and
outstanding performance that are not (and, in the physicists’
view should not be) in reach of every physicist” (Traweek
1988)
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Collaboration: “The group leader doesn’t get to say what to
do”, “Socialist”, ”federation”, ”club”, “meritocracy”.
Physics has a globalised working practices, mediated by a
travelling culture (Merz 2006)
Advanced Users: Particle Physicists

Currently constructing the worlds most
powerful particle accelerator… the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

~100,000,000 electronic channels

800,000,000 proton-proton interactions
per second.

Searching for Higgs Boson – “1 person
in 1000 worlds, or 1 needle in 20
million haystacks”

Unprecedented amount of data from
the LHC (12-14 million gigabytes) (1%
of all info!)
CD stack with
1 year LHC data
(~ 20 km)
(Ex-)Concorde
(15 km)
PP and Computing

Envisage requiring 100,000 machines (processors)
working together as a “supercomputer” by 2008.

Historically successful at pragmatic use of new
technology (Web, Cray, Open-source, farms).

“Particle physics has always pushed the bounds of
computing. I mean I’m the guy who sort of pushed the first
networks which was really; the first use of the Internet.”
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“Particle physics has never failed because of computing”
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Highly collaborative working practices (Knorr-Cetina
1999) with few formal lines of authority.

So I think if Ian [Foster] hadn’t created the concept of
the grid it would have been invented here anyway.
We may not have tried to match it to a paradigm and
called it the same, but it would have had to have been
invented because we have to use all these machines.
The LHC grid and GridPP
19 UK institutes.
 £33m (2001-7)
 GridPP runs
around 10,000
nodes.
 3000 ‘users’
 Tier Architecture

Grids: Hype or the next big thing?

“Overturn strategic and operating
assumptions, alter industrial economics,
upset markets (…) pose daunting
challenges for every user and vendor”
(Carr, 2005)

“Provide the electronic foundation for a
global society in business, government,
research, science and entertainment”
(Berman, 2003)

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“Potentially the same social impact as
railroads” (Smarr 2004)
“Nothing New” and “plenty of confusion”
(Gentzsch, 2002)
Grids: Technology

Emerging platform for coordinated
resource sharing and problem solving on a
global scale for data-intensive and
compute-intensive applications (Foster, 2001)

As Internet protocols enable the sharing
and integration of information on the Web,
so Grid protocols aim to allow the
integration of … sensors, applications,
data-storage, computer processors and
most other IT resources (Wladawsky-Berger,
Experiment layer
Application Middleware
2004)

Centred around standard protocols and
middleware.
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1: No central control.

2: Standard open protocols.
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3: Non-trivial level of service.
Grid Middleware
Facilities and Fabrics
Grids: Collaboration

“Coordinated resource sharing and problem solving in dynamic,
multi-institutional virtual organizations" (Foster, 2001)

… which “enable disparate groups of organisations and/or
individuals to share resources in a controlled fashion, so that
members may collaborate to achieve a shared goal” (Foster, 2001)

“E-science is about global collaboration in key areas… will change
the dynamic of the way science is undertaken” (John Taylor)

It is politics rather than technology which will inhibit grids (Orzech
2003)
Pegasus Research
Social science research on Grid
Our Research Focus
Preliminary Findings
Emerging themes
Related Research on E-science

Institutional infrastructures for e-Science (David and Spencer
2003)
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Access to research data and data sharing (Wouters and
Schroeder 2003)
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The influence of different knowledge domains on the
appropriation of grid technology (Fry and Thelwall 2006)

The construction of users along two discursive repertoires
(Jacobs and Steyaert 2006)
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Functional efficiency
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Communal collaboration
Research Objectives

To understand the evolving Grid as
integrated practices “to do science” and of
“doing science”.

To reflect and theorize innovative
approaches to infrastructure development,
as contrasted with traditional approaches

To disseminate the experiences of early
Grid adopters to academic, scientific,
political, and industrial audiences, as well
as the general public.
Research Questions
To explore “actions to science” alongside “actions of doing science”
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How the specific needs of the LHC
become translated into GridPP, both
in the technical and organizational
sense;
Particle Physics
requirements
How are working practices of particle
physics inscribed into the technology,
and dictate how the grid is developed;
How is the Grid used by particle
physicists to do their scientific work;
How does the Grid (actual and
potential) come to influence the work
of particle physicists for the LHC.
practices
LHC &
experiments
use
requirements
Grid technology for PP
Methodology
Grid Developers
(middleware)
Grid
Deployment
(GridPP)
Grid Users
(Actual and
potential)
30+ interviews,
transcribed.
Data analysis using
Atlas.ti
Preliminary Findings
Resources
Nobel
prize
Institutes
Truth of universe
physics
Worldwide LCG
collaboration
LHC
LCG/GridPP
“It will work because it’s got to work.”
Computing
successes
Bottom-up
“The way we work”
Trust
competence
common goal
large scale
collaboration
“Contests of
unfolding”
“Communitarian
ontology”
Distributed
cognition
pragmatism
Relevant Concepts
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Collective mind (Weick)
Inscription and translation
Artful integration (Suchman 2002)
“cultural production of new forms of material
practice.”
 “the continued existence of hybrid systems
composed of heterogeneous devices.”

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Objectual practices (Knorr-Cetina 2001)

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notion of practice that is more dynamic, creative, and
constructive than the current definition of practice as rule-based
routines or embodied skills suggests.
Technology emergent in contests of
unfolding (Knorr-Cetina 1999)
Your feedback and
suggestions please!