SanDisk SSDs Help Accelerate High Energy Physics Research For Origin of the Universe

SanDisk Corporation announced that the University of Michigan and University of Victoria (CA) are utilizing its Fusion ioMemory solutions to fuel their multi-site supercomputing project, which helps them reduce the server footprint needed to transmit enormous datasets.

Working in conjunction with the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, teams of high-energy physicists at each university are using flash memory to push the limits of network technology, transferring approximately 170PB datasets from the Large Hadron Collider to research centers around the world. By utilizing Fusion ioMemory solutions, the universities can accelerate access to data, allowing physicists to expedite the potential discovery of new particles and forces that will help explain the nature of the universe.

“SanDisk is thrilled to be working with the teams at the University of Michigan and University of Victoria to help fuel their success by providing fast, cost-effective and highly scalable flash solutions to increase data access,” said Sumit Sadana, EVP and chief strategy officer, SanDisk. “By utilizing flash technology, the researchers can cost effectively transfer massive amounts of data over long distances, ultimately enabling them to reach new discoveries faster.“

In 2015, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider-which discovered the Higgs boson in 2012 – will start colliding elements at the highest energies ever achieved in a particle accelerator. With this in mind, the physicists at the Universities of Michigan and Victoria needed to create a data transfer architecture based upon a single server that was able to transfer figures across 100 computing centers around the world at 100Gb/s speeds. Working with Fusion ioMemory solutions, the teams were able to deploy a single server storage environment that delivered massive data transmissions, eliminating the need for a multi-server configuration, reducing complexity, cost, and points-of-failure. The solution allows researchers to quickly access and analyze their data thereby speeding discoveries.

“The ATLAS and CMS supercomputing projects are very large international projects, each involving approximately 3,000 researchers and most of the world’s countries. These are long term projects-they started 20 years ago and will continue for another 20+ years,” said Randall Sobie, Institute of Particle Physics Research scientist and professor, University of Victoria. “My colleagues and I are proud and excited that we have now found a way to accelerate the discoveries made for each of these projects with the help of flash memory solutions from SanDisk. This is a prime example of how SanDisk helps customers meet their goals by enabling fast, reliable access to mission-critical data.“

At SuperComputing 2014, the team of physicists under the leadership of Professor H. Newman of Caltech, leveraged Fusion ioMemory solutions to transfer data over the WAN located at the University of Victoria, to the WAN in the University of Michigan booth, via the Caltech booth.