Technology Programme

Programme Director: Ari-Pekka Hameri

The Technology Programme of Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP-TEK) is currently committed to the following goal; to push Grid technology-related innovations into real use. In practice, this is accomplished through close cooperation with industrial and academic partners in joint projects.

In the year 2008, the DataGrid project will carry on with its new sister project called the LHC-Cluster project. The aim of the LHC-Cluster project is to set up together with CSC the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Tier-2 Grid computing facilities mostly for Finnish High Energy Physic (HEP) but also other sciences. The DataGrid and LHC-Cluster projects will complement each other in a meaningful way, as the Grid applications and the related middleware are useless if there is no physical infrastructure with the correct human skills to execute the physics software.

At this time, HIP-TEK is involved in two large-scale Grid prototypes that comprise already several thousands of processing units: EGEE/LCG and NorduGrid. In Grid deployment projects such as EGEE and LCG continuously increasing efforts will be channeled to re-engineering and hardening of current Grid middleware, providing round-the-clock support services and training of researchers for the new computing tools. The physics community and the LHC project will remain in the forefront as it drives the development and deployment of Grid computing. As such, the Technology Programme is in excellent position to participate and contribute to selected European Grid initiatives.

All the knowledge and the expertise in the group are best served by setting up and running our own computing resources that are connected with a Grid infrastructure and offered to users having differing scientific needs. The Technology Programme's team in Finland provides cluster resources that showcase working software in the Grid environment. The Technology Programme intends to continue to provide and develop such services also for scientists in other fields than particle physics.

Technology transfer and dissemination in the Grid computing context have been quite fashionable in EU-funded projects in which CERN is an important player. This fact is reflected by such industry collaborations as the CERN openlab for data grid applications. One of the goals of the group is to follow-up national Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry involvement and to form project collaborations.. Through these initiatives the HIP Technology Programme will be able to increase awareness and technology transfer between academic and industrial partners in the field of Grid computing.

DataGrid project

Project manager: Miika Tuisku

The Technology Programme’s DataGrid project has two focus areas in 2008: Grid middleware development, Grid applications and i ndustrial collaboration.

The aim of the DataGrid project is to promote Grid technologies widely in different scientific and industrial applications. This will be achieved by identifying and further developing the research results of scientific Grid projects (CERN, EU, Nordic projects) to industry applications (for example Tekes-funded projects).

The Grid middleware development focus area identifies potential technologies in e-science projects, and develops them further to better fit other scientific fields and possible commercial exploitation. The group contains people working in both EGEE and Nordic NGI projects. The Grid applications and industrial collaboration focus area emphasizes the importance of attracting end-users to develop practical applications by utilizing Grid resources. The focus area also looks actively to develop partner networks outside the group and contributes to the fundraising of out-reach activities.

LHC-Cluster project

Project manager: Antti Pirinen

The LHC-Cluster project was started in the beginning of 2007 as a sub-project of the DataGrid project. In the begining of 2008 it will start as a new sister project of DataGrid. The LHC-Cluster project has two goals:
  1. To set up computing facilities and educate administrators to maintain the Tier-2 infrastructure of Finnish High Energy Physicists as a part of the worldwide LHC Computing Grid (LCG) facility.
  2. To promote Grid technologies to other sciences and business.
To reach these goals, LHC-Cluster project is divided to two focus areas. The first one, Cluster and Grid development, concentrates on educating young researchers to build and maintain high performance computing clusters, and promoting Grid technologies to other sciences and business. The second focus area, HEP computing, will concentrate on making physics software and services available for researchers and to ensure that the Finnish Tier-2 operations are able to collaborate with the LCG facility.
This new project is well-aligned with the overall effort in Finland to pool national resources for cross-scientific research. From the Technology Programme’s perspective, an important dimension is also to review Grids as an innovation and development platform for new scientific research activity. The first steps for coordinating such activities in Finland have already been made. The HIP Technology Programme has already been collaborating with CSC, HIIT, and VTT and in the coming years these joint efforts will be intensified.
The project will first use the existing hardware resources of the HIP Technology Programme as a development test bed and will find optimal approaches for LHC computing. The production environment will be set-up in close cooperation with CSC and placed in the CSC computing & data centre.