The research and development efforts required to address the HEP challenges for the HL-LHC are challenging. The current LHC physics program is enabled by an elaborate software and computing ecosystem. The planned major hardware upgrades for the HL-LHC, and its planned physics program, will require significant evolution of this ecosystem. Major advances in software performance, adaptability, sustainability, workforce development and training that take full advantage of future data & compute platforms and leverage developments from outside of HEP are needed to succeed. Maintaining a coherent R&D effort in software and computing is required to achieve the physics goals of that era.
The NSF Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics (IRIS-HEP) was established in September 2018 to meet these challenges through R&D for software to acquire, manage, process and analyse HL-LHC data. The Institute has now completed its 4th year of its R&D program and continues to develop a role as an intellectual hub for HEP software and computing. The time is right to checkpoint the broad program of software R&D for HEP and continue to elaborate how IRIS-HEP and other US HEP software and computing R&D efforts fit together in a program of work to enable science in the HL-LHC era. The primary theme of this workshop is to explore and establish coherence and alignment within this broad program. This workshop will bring together representatives from the IRIS-HEP team, representatives from other large R&D efforts, US funding agencies, software and computing management in the stakeholder experiments, national & international laboratories, leadership-class facilities (LCFs) & Centers and partner projects to make progress toward this goal. Specific questions which the workshop will address include:
- How does the ensemble of US Software R&D efforts fit together to implement the HL-LHC Software/Computing roadmap and meet the challenges of the HL-LHC? Which areas are not covered by US R&D efforts and should have international coordination? Which areas present new challenges or new opportunities since the Community White Paper (CWP) process that was executed in 2017?
- How do the US Software R&D efforts collaborate with each other and with international efforts? How do these efforts align with and leverage national exascale, national NSF OAC priorities and trends in the broader community?
- How should the US R&D efforts be structured and evolved in the coming years in order to achieve our goals between now and the HL-LHC era?
This workshop builds on the Mini-workshop on HL-LHC Software and Computing R&D held at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in November, 2017, and the Coordinated Ecosystem for HL-LHC Computing R&D workshop, also held at CUA, in October, 2019.
This event will take place at the Washington DC office of the University of Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs, Suite 120, 1400 16th St NW, Washington, DC. See Venue for location details.
 | This event is being organised by the Institute for Research and Innovation in Software (IRIS-HEP) with support from National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement OAC-1836650. |
