Large Scale Cluster Computing Workshops


Large Scale Computing
in
High Energy Physics, Astrophysics, Accelerator Physics, Nuclear Physics and Biophysics

Sponsored by:
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and CERN


Recent revolutions in computer hardware and software technologies have paved the way for the large-scale deployment of clusters of commodity computers to address problems heretofore the domain of tightly coupled SMP processors. Near term projects within High Energy Physics -- and other computing communities -- will deploy clusters of scale 1000s of processors and 100s of independent users. This will expand the reach in both dimensions by an order of magnitude from the current successful production facilities.

For this reason, Fermilab and CERN have sponsored a series of Workshops (two thus far) the goals of which are to gather and share knowledge of design, construction and operational techniques in the building and operation of large computing clusters and to foster closer interactions between computer scientists and physicists.

The panel to the left has links to the detailed programme of each workshop and the resulting proceedings.

The information gathered at these workshops is being processed into a so-called "Guide to Building and Operating a Large Cluster". While not attempting to answer all the questions in the field, the primary goal of this guide is to list all the questions and to provide some of the answers, usually with links to further information. The zero'th draft is now available in Word and PDF format. Readers are invited to give feedback (errors, missing sections, etc) to the editor Alan Silverman (but to accept that this is still a work in progress.

Further workshops will be held in due course but in the meantime, there will be occasional sessions on the theme of large clusters held alongside the bi-annual HEPiX-HEPNT meetings, the next of which is in May in NIKHEF, Amsterdam.
 


Co-Chairs

Alan Silverman
Mark Kaletka
lccws@fnal.gov


Organizing Committee

Alan Silverman (co-chair, CERN)
Mark Kaletka (co-chair, Fermilab)
Olof Barring (CERN)
Lisa Giacchetti (Fermilab)
Matthias Kasemann (Fermilab)
Bernd Panzer-Steidel (CERN)
Don Petravick (Fermilab)
Ruth Pordes (Fermilab)
Les Robertson (CERN)
Dane Skow (Fermilab)
Steven Wolbers (Fermilab)

Conference Secretariat

Cynthia Sazama (Fermilab)
Patti Poole (Fermilab)
Suzanne Weber (Fermilab)


Last updated by AGS on March 18th, 2003