Speaker
Description
CernVM-FS remains a central service for the distribution of the CMS Offline Software (CMSSW). Traditional use cases include the distribution of CMSSW releases and container images. It also plays a crucial role in the deployment of Integration Builds (IB) and pull request testing as part of the CMSSW CI/CD workflow.
In this contribution, we present three new use cases of CernVM-FS for CMS. Firstly, the distribution of gridpacks to accelerate Monte Carlo generation. Gridpacks are pre-computed diagrams distributed in the form of tarballs that are used as lookup files. The CernVM-FS ingest command allows the serving of already-untarred gridpacks, reducing the load of unpacking them on computing sites. Secondly, the use of opportunistic HPC resources using the singcvmfs command in the cvmfsexec package. The CMS Offline infrastructure already makes use of AMD GPUs from the LUMI HPC in Finland, thanks to FUSE pre-mounting. Finally, we are currently building the CMSSW software stack for the RISC-V architecture. To include this new architecture in the CMSSW IBs, deployment to CernVM-FS using emulation on the publisher nodes has been implemented.
These new use cases at CMS highlight the importance of CernVM-FS in streamlining workflows and improving the performance of the CMS Offline infrastructure.
