CERN Physics Screen Saver: Help LHC tracking studies on your PC

Many PC users are familiar with screensavers such as SETI@home and FightAIDS@home. These screensavers take advantage of times when your PC is idle to do useful computing on a particular scientific problem. SETI@home, which analyses radio-astronomy data for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, has been downloaded by over 5 million people. Similar programs are now sold commercially, and installed in major corporations to provide extra computing power at low cost.
CERN 's IT Department is interested in evaluating this sort of technology for the future. Most of the scientific computing challenges that the LHC experiments are facing will require access to large amounts of storage, and cannot be run on individual PCs. However, there are exceptions. A program called SixTrack, which simulates particles traveling around the LHC to study the stability of their orbits, can fit on a single PC and requires relatively little input or output. SixTrack, which was developed by Frank Schmidt of the AB Department, produces results that are essential for verifying the long term stability of the high energy particles in the LHC.
A screensaver platform called CERN Physics Screen Saver (CPSS) has been developed and tested by Andreas Wagner and Eric McIntosh of the IT Department. Tests over the last two months in the IT Department, in close collaboration with AB, have involved over 200 desktop computers and have yielded over 100,000 hours of PC computation. Only a few minor bugs were detected in this time, and all have been resolved.
Lyn Evans, head of the LHC project, says that "the results from CPSS are really making a difference, providing us with new insights into how the LHC will perform". The IT Department is keen to extend this trial to the rest of CERN, on a voluntary basis. You are therefore encouraged to install the screensaver on your desktop computer. Please note that the screensaver is not suitable for laptops, and only runs on Windows machines. All you have to do is:

  • Click on the Control Panel menu (accessible from Start or My Computer)
  • Click on the Add/Remove Programs button
  • Click on the Add Programs button and scroll down to CPSS
  • Click on this item, and then on "Add"

The screensaver will run when you are not active on your PC, including nights and weekends if you leave your PC on. You can set parameters for the screensaver on most PCs, including the time the PC waits idle before starting the screensaver, by right-clicking on your desktop, choosing "Properties" and choosing the screensaver menu. The screensaver will disappear whenever you click your mouse or hit a key on your keyboard, and the calculation will pause and restart the next time your screensaver starts.
If your screen is password protected, you will need to press CTRL/ALT/DEL, as usual. If you want to switch off your screen to save power, this will not disturb the program, which will continue calculating. Note that even an old 100MHz PC runs one job per night. If you experience any problems with the screensaver, do not hesitate to contact Cpss-Support@cern.ch. You can remove the screensaver at any time by following the instructions above and clicking on "Remove".
Part of the interest in screensavers like CPSS is the ability of the users to see what they are contributing to the overall challenge, and monitor their ranking compared with other contributors. To monitor your PC 's ranking, a website can be viewed at:
http://cpss.web.cern.ch/cpss/status/clientlist.asp
A special prize will be awarded to the user from outside the IT Department who contributes the most CPU time during the rest of August.