Computing and data handling recent experiences at Fermilab and SLAC
P. S. Cooper · AIP conference proceedings · 1990
Computing has become evermore central to the doing of high energy physics. There are now major second and third generation experiments for which the largest single cost is computing. At the same time the availability of ‘‘cheap’’ computing has made possible experiments which were previously considered infeasible. The result of this trend has been an explosion of computing and computing needs. I will review here the magnitude of the problem, as seen at Fermilab and SLAC, and the present methods for dealing with it. I will then undertake the dangerous assignment of projecting the needs and solutions forthcoming in the next few years at both laboratories. I will concentrate on the ‘‘offline’’ problem; the process of turning terabytes of data tapes into pages of physics journals.