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A former colleague did his PHD in particle physics with a novel technique (matrix element method). I can't really explain it, but it is extremely CPU intensive.

A former colleague did his PHD in particle physics with a novel technique (matrix element method). I can't really explain it, but it is extremely CPU intensive. That working group did it on CERN's resources, and they had to borrow quotas from a bunch of other people. For fun they calculated how much it would have cost on AWS and came up with something ridiculous like 3 million euros.

rirze 4y ago
I would imagine CERN's resources are essentially a data center comparable to a small cloud provider's resources.
wenc 4y ago
I can’t specifically to CERN and the exact workload. But bear in mind that the 3MM euros is non negotiated sticker pricing. In real life, negotiated pricing can be much much less depending on your org size and spend. This is a variable most people neglect.
- captainmuon 4y ago
  That is true, and a large part of the theoretical cost was probably also traffic, and the use of nonstandard nodes. They could have gotten a much more realistic price. I guess the point is also that scientists often don't realize computer costs money, when the computers are already bought
dguest 4y ago
The bigger experiments will routinely burn through tens of millions worth of computing. But 10 million euros isn't much for these experiments. The issue is that they are publicly funded: any country is much happier to build a local computing center and lend it to scientists than to fork the money over to an American cloud provider. (The expensive part of these experiments is simulating billions of collisions and how the thousands of outgoing particles propagate though a detector the size of a small building. Simulating a single event takes around a minute on a modern CPU, and the experiments will simulate billions of events in a few months. If AWS is charging 5 cents a minute it works out to tens of millions easy.)

rirze 4y ago

I would imagine CERN's resources are essentially a data center comparable to a small cloud provider's resources.

wenc 4y ago

I can’t specifically to CERN and the exact workload. But bear in mind that the 3MM euros is non negotiated sticker pricing. In real life, negotiated pricing can be much much less depending on your org size and spend. This is a variable most people neglect.

captainmuon 4y ago
That is true, and a large part of the theoretical cost was probably also traffic, and the use of nonstandard nodes. They could have gotten a much more realistic price. I guess the point is also that scientists often don't realize computer costs money, when the computers are already bought

dguest 4y ago

The bigger experiments will routinely burn through tens of millions worth of computing. But 10 million euros isn't much for these experiments. The issue is that they are publicly funded: any country is much happier to build a local computing center and lend it to scientists than to fork the money over to an American cloud provider. (The expensive part of these experiments is simulating billions of collisions and how the thousands of outgoing particles propagate though a detector the size of a small building. Simulating a single event takes around a minute on a modern CPU, and the experiments will simulate billions of events in a few months. If AWS is charging 5 cents a minute it works out to tens of millions easy.)