CERN, 31-S-012
Present: Philippe Charpentier, Chris Eck, Fabrizio Gagliardi, Miguel Marquina, Alberto Masoni, Gilbert Poulard, Les Robertson, Lucas Taylor, Wolfgang von Rueden, Torre Wenaus
The first round of recruitment by PPARC is being completed, and about 10 people will be offered jobs, covering a number of areas in the project. Over 100 applications were received, and about 30 candidates were interviewed. Tony Hey, the director of the Core e-Science Programme at EPSRC (the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), intends to fund a total of 6 posts for Computer Science fellows at CERN. The first recruitment exercise has resulted in one fellow being proposed, working on Datagrid Workpackage 2 within CMS. A second recruitment exercise will begin soon, with a simplified application procedure.
Minutes will be produced as executive summaries of the meetings. Philippe proposes to make use of the AS system "Agenda Maker"
Mailing lists done (lcg-peb@cern.ch), website: current (http://cern.ch/lhcgrid) will be aliased to http://cern.ch/lcg
Office space: Matthias is negotiating with EP for space for the project nearer to the offices of the LHC experiments.
Video-conferencing facilities are being acquired for the project meeting room. An MCU to enable multi-site codec and H.323 conferences to be be held will be considered
Meetings will for the meantime take place weekly, every Tuesday at 16:00 for 1.5-2 hours. The next meeting will be on January 8. Members are asked to state their availability for the January meetings.
ALICE - Alberto Masoni - see foils (PPT - PDF)
- Emphasis on Applications: need to understand schedules of current software deliverables (Anaphe, GEANT4, CASTOR, ROOT...); concerned about the support that the project will give for FLUKA and ROOT.
- Data Challenge milestones concentrate on data recording and storage management
ATLAS - Gilbert Poulard - see foils (PPT - PDF )
- Applications: also concerned with the schedules of the current software developments.
CMS - Lucas Taylor - see foils (PPT - PDF)
- Stresses the missing manpower for core software in 2002. CMS is concerned that the fact that national funding bodies have pledged support for the LCG may make it more difficult for the experiments to obtain staff for the core software.
- Object persistency is a major concern, for which a solution is urgently needed. CMS has initiated a study of how to proceed, including representatives of the other collaborations, IT and the ROOT team. The study has now completed and the chairman, David Stickland, will prepare a report. It was agreed that Torre Wenaus should analyse the report when it becomes available and prepare a proposal for the PEB to take to the SC2 on how to proceed in this area.
LHCb - Philippe Charpentier - see foils (PPT - PDF)
- Very good "shopping list" of applications and support tools, that could be developed into a general list of requirements and priorities for the four experiments.
- Again, briefing on schedules/plans of IT products would be welcome.
General points:
- Lucas suggested to combine all four experiment milestones into a single document.
- The importance of good liaison between the European Grid projects and the US Grid projects was discussed, particularly in terms of achieving inter-operability and enabling data challenges to operate on a Grid composed of sites from different projects.
Next meeting is scheduled for 8 January at 16:00, room to be announced.
Draft agenda:
- Plans/priorities of the API and DB Groups in IT
- Outcome of the 2002 COCOTIME planning concerning the LCG prototype and in particular the scheduling of the LXSHARE facility.
Miguel Marquina 19 December 2001