CERN Parses Hadron Collider Data with 900 Supermicro Computers and AMD CPUs

CERN is trying to discover what happened in the nanoseconds following the Big Bang that created all matter. It is manipulating data flows with custom AMD circuitry that slices up the Large Hadron Collider data into smaller pieces. “You need to get all the data pieces together in a single location because only then can you do a meaningful calculation on this stuff,” said Niko Neufeld, a CERN project leader. The effort entails rapid data processing, high-bandwidth access to lots of memory and very speedy I/O among many servers.