Future IT Challenges in Scientific Research

Advanced research needs nowadays advanced ICT. It means typically fast signal capturing, fast networks and big data handling capabilities. CERN’s openlab has published a document explaining stuff it wants someone to invent so it can get the most out of the large hadron collider (LHC) and its other instruments. CERN openlab Whitepaper on Future IT Challenges in Scientific Research tells that rather that exotic kit was needed to cope with the petabyte-per-second the LHC creates and that a few new advanced technologies would be needed quite soon to successfully continue the research.

On the networking side there will be need for a very high-bandwidth networks capable of integrating data from about a thousand 100 Gbit/s links and call for wireless networks that can “operate, in a high-radiation, high magnetic field environment, at bandwidths exceeding 100Gbit/s and without losing a single frame”. In the storage front there is need for technology to handle 20 gigbaytes per second of writes to storage (plus two verification reads) and latency-tolerant wide-area NFS. Quite demanding stuff, and there is plenty of more material like this in in the 56-page document.