Description
High Energy Physics (HEP) is once again facing a “requirement wall” in all dimensions of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Considering the current estimations of computing needs, the constrained budget that will be devoted to HEP computing, and the projected evolution of the actual capacity delivered by technology to HEP computing, a shortage of an order of magnitude in the next ten years and beyond seems to be a fair prediction. To maintain the discovery potential of HEP research infrastructures and to benefit fully from the data that will be collected — at great cost — by future experiments, it is important to find ways to reduce this expected shortfall. HEP has already faced such situations in the past, and the solution has often been to turn promising technologies from prototype to reality by working closely with hardware and software providers and ICT experts from academia and other research fields. HEP computing is often several years ahead of other, more general computing fields.
While pursuing its mission of exploring the fundamental nature of matter at the smallest possible scale, CERN has established a solid reputation of innovation in ICT. CERN was an early adopter of many computing technologies. In addition to the World Wide Web, CERN has provided pioneering contributions to computer networking, grid, and cloud technologies.
In order to ensure the availability of sufficient computing resources, CERN and the HEP community should continue investigating innovative ICT technologies in close collaboration with the main actors.
