Hamburg Hackertours

40C3 DESY Computing Centre

Peek behind the scenes of the computing centre at DESY, one of the world’s leading accelerator research centres: tape library, HPC cluster, storage, and the cooling, power and network that keep it all running.

The DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (German Electron Synchrotron) in Hamburg-Bahrenfeld runs particle accelerators and large-scale experiments that produce enormous amounts of data. The tour starts with a short talk on what DESY does and which role IT plays in it. You’ll visit the computing centre: the tape library, the HPC cluster and the storage systems, as well as the infrastructure behind them – cooling, power, network and the control room.

The tour is run by DESY’s IT team, so the focus is on IT technology and on the requirements of current experiments; the research itself isn’t covered in depth. At the end there is time for questions – and maybe even answers.

Before your visit

The computing centre is loud; DESY provides disposable earplugs. Please follow the guides’ instructions at all times.

Taking photos for personal usage is permitted – DESY would be happy to get links to them afterwards.

Please arrive at the Hackertours desk at the advertised time. A guide will bring you from the Hackertours desk to DESY. A map of the DESY campus is available by visiting https://campus.desy.de

Accessibility

There is a large ramp at the entrance of building 2a, and there are no steps in the computing centre itself. An accessible toilet is on the basement floor.

Details