Visit of the LHC tunnel, from left to right: Abdulrahman Jarrar (Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the Board, Intel), Craig R. Barrett (Chairman of the Board, Intel), Wolfgang von Rüden (Head of CERN openlab), Barbara Barrett (Former Ambassador of the USA to Finland), Lyn Evans (sLHC Project Leader, CERN).

Craig Barrett, chairman of the Board of Intel, visited CERN on 27^th January, accompanied by Barbara Barrett, former Ambassador of the United States of America to Finland. This was his second visit to CERN underlining the long-term relationship between Intel and CERN openlab since 2003.

After an introduction to CERN and an update on the LHC programme by Sergio Bertolucci, Director for Research and Computing, they visited the Atlas experiment guided by Peter Jenni and Andrew Lankford, followed by a descend into the LHC tunnel lead by Lyn Evans, sLHC Project Leader.

In the afternoon, Craig Barrett gave a well attended talk within the CERN Computing Colloquium series on the topic “Inspiring Innovation”, highlighting Intel’s massive investment in innovation, both in hardware and software. He showed as an example a prototype of a 300mm wafer containing over 100 processor units, each containing 80 cores, representing a power of over 100 Teraflops on the wafer. The video of the talk can be viewed by clicking on this link ..

Next, our guests came to CERN openlab to discuss strategic issues concerning our relationship with Intel who recently signed an extension for another three years. The visit ended with a dinner, hosted by the Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer.

Wolfgang von Rüden

Head of CERN openlab