- All the experiments use GPUs which come straight from the vendors.
- Most of the computing isn't even on site, it's distributed around the world in various computing centers. Yes they also overflow into cloud computing but various publicly funded datacenters tend to be cheaper (or effectively "free" because they were allocated to CERN experiments).
Some very specific elements (those in the detector) need to be radiation hard and need O(microsecond) latency. These custom electronics are built all over the world by contributing national labs and universities.
CERN builds almost next to nothing anymore. Half a century ago they really did do RF cavities, cooling, electronics etc. Not anymore. It is either COTS (DELL, Alterra etc.) or chiefly vendor bidding for some custom parts. Much like what NASA (from Rocketdyne, TRW to Boeing and SpaceX) or copycat ESA (Airbus, DLR, BAE's suppliers) does today.
It is a project bureau. Everything is essentially outsourced, leaving a management shell institute to parade for VIPs. Actually they are close to completely forgetting what they already knew in the hard sciences domain.
Everyone needs to agree on a place to put the LHC, and a lot of the accelerator team is on sight and probably should be payed by CERN, but they have a clear set of KPIs for that: they need to get the machine up to design energy and luminosity and hold it there. The CERN accelerator and civil engineering teams are pretty impressive and have mostly done their job.
The rest of the scientific community can (and does) organize into pseudo-autonomous collaborations that draft proposals for what to do with the real-estate around the collision points and beam dumps. The vast majority of these people don't work for CERN.
I do hope that sufficient humiliation will suffice for DB leadership to enact harsh measures. German precision and punctuality are still there in its people. It's not lost yet.
The millstones of the gods grind late, but they grind well. It depends where you're from -- there is always potential for dramatic change in a people as obedient as the German.
I've been trying my hand at RL envs for various sparse matrix algorithms in CUDA. It's easy to generate code that "looks good", "novel" and "fast". Escaping the distribution and actually creating novel sequences of instructions or even patterns (has any model come with something as useful as fan-in/fan-out or double buffering patterns that's now ubiquituous?) seems difficult to say the least.
I know some people who took a look at their StaSi files. Today's really different compared to what happened then: There wasn't someone from inside your inner circle transmitting every joke and every utterance to "law enforcement" for them to build kompromat. Sure, nowadays your every move is sold to god-knows-who but this will not impact your ability to choose a course of study (which may or may not suit you academically). You can get a job anywhere provided you have clearance and education needed. You will not look at pictures from your childhood and realize that three out of five people sold you out to get ahead in the queue to acquire a car. Your most intimate thoughts and acts aren't recorded for random bureaucrats to get a laugh out of. Please think again before equivocating "den Realen" with modern democracy. Neoliberal, consumerism societies definitely have their flaws but you're definitely better off on the freedom scale.
"Your most intimate thoughts and acts aren't recorded for random bureaucrats to get a laugh out of"
Actually they are all the time, the phone is always listening, Alexa is always listening, Ring is always listening. You don't know what happens to that data as it goes through the layers.
The bureaucrats are not laughing but the analysts are.
"You will not look at pictures from your childhood and realize that three out of five people sold you out to get ahead in the queue to acquire a car."
Right... You will just look at your LinkedIn network and ponder which one of your co-workers sold you out to get ahead. But they call it "competition" now. Even though its augmented with all this data that is available.
Make 10 fake accounts and comment stupid shit on their posts usually does the trick or better make 1 account and play a disgruntled mistress add some AI lewds as receipt, there are easy ways to ruin someones reputation...
> Today's really different compared to what happened then: There wasn't someone from inside your inner circle transmitting every joke and every utterance to "law enforcement"
They also didn't stay around you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week like your phone or computer and didn't record every move (using GSM, GPS and accelerometer).
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