Storage solutions
All of the data filtered by the trigger will instantly be transmitted to the CERN computing centre. At a rate of 2,000 events per second, the amount of information recorded by LHCb will be enough to fill 300 CDs (250 GB) every hour. Over a year, this adds up to a 400,000 CDs worth of data – enough to build a stack as high as the Empire State Building!
In order to cope with the massive amount of data generated by LHCb and other experiments, CERN has created a global computing system called the ‘Grid’. Data from the LHCb experiment will be replicated throughout a network of 100 computer centres around the world, meaning tens of thousands of computers will be able to analyse LHCb data simultaneously.