Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP) 2012

Application of the DIRAC framework in CTA: first evaluation

22 May 2012, 13:30

4h 45m

Rosenthal Pavilion (10th floor) (Kimmel Center)

Poster Distributed Processing and Analysis on Grids and Clouds (track 3) Poster Session

Speaker

Luisa Arrabito (IN2P3/LUPM on behalf of the CTA Consortium)

Description

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) – an array of many tens of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes deployed on an unprecedented scale – is the next generation instrument in the field of very high energy gamma-ray astronomy. CTA will operate as an open observatory providing data products to the scientific community. An average data stream of some GB/s for about 1000 hours of observation per year, thus producing several PB/year, is expected. Large CPU time is required for data processing as well as for massive Monte Carlo simulations (MC) needed for detector calibration purposes and performance studies as a function of detectors and lay-out configurations. Given these large storage and computing requirements, the Grid approach is well suited and massive MC simulations are already running on the EGI Grid. In order to optimize resource usage and to handle in a coherent way all production and future analysis activities, a high level framework with advanced functionalities is needed. For this purpose the DIRAC framework for distributed computing access implementing CTA workloads is evaluated. The benchmark test results of DIRAC as well as the extensions developed to cope with CTA specific needs are presented.