Little nuclear physics lab to tackle Department of Energy ’s big data problem

At risk of drowning in the output from its own facilities, the Department of Energy (DOE) plans to build a major new computing center specifically to crunch experimental data. The agency will construct a $305 million High Performance Data Facility at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in Newport News, Virginia, officials announced last w eek. To be completed by 2028, the new data center marks an evolution in the agency’s approach to science and gives a new lease on life to JLab, a small lab that currently focuses on nuclear physics and accelerator development. “This is a major response to the growing demand,” says Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, director of DOE’s Office of Science. DOE’s x-ray and neutron sources and atom smashers serve thousands of experiments probing everything from the origins of matter to the structures of materials and proteins. As the intensity of the sources has increased, they produce data ever faster and in greater detail, threatening to overwhelm computing resources at the 10 national laboratories run by the Office of Science. “The need for managing data is only growing,” Berhe says. For example, DOE runs four circular electron accelerators, or synchrotrons, that generate x-rays, and since the 1970s the intensity of such sources has increased 100 billion–fold . And next spring, Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois will finish upgrading its Advanced Photon Source (APS) to boost...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news