Larry Dennis / Software notes

[Elton Smith <elton@jlab.org>]

Hi all,

I had informal conversation with Larry Dennis on Tues (Jun 27) and he
updated me on software projects which might be of interest to Hall D.
In general they address the increased scale of effort compared to
current activities. Roughly the computing power required for Hall D is
about an order-of-magnitude larger than for Hall B. We are counting on
a 5-10 increase in computing power for the same price to compensate.
Larry is addressing some of the issues related to maintenance and
organization of the softare to handle the increased capabilities.

We also discussed the possibility of addressing some of these issues at
the next collaboration meeting.

Here is a brief summary

1. Parallelism of PWA code / resonance parameter extraction.

Florida State University has an agreement with SGI to have access to a new
IA 64 with machine and profiling tools to study strategies for running codes
in parallel. The ultimate goal is for these machines to use "commodity"
(widely marketed, i.e. low cost) switches and backplanes. Larry is planning
to use the PWA code as a test case for speed increases using parallelism. At
a later time one might wish to consider updating GEANT, function
minimization codes or other generic algorithms to take advantage of this
hardware.  If there are other members of the collaboration who would like
access to this computer, please contact Larry (dennisl@csit.fsu.edu).

2. NVIDIA high-end graphics cards for PC's.

These can support up to 50,000 polygons / sec for use with 3D video on a
desktop. The question is whether this hardware could be used for
visualization of multi-dimensional PWA output (or other projects).

3. GLOBUS was developed through NSF/DOE funding to create a computational
grid spanning many distributed computing and data resources. It operates as
a layer on top of the computers' operating systems. It includes all security
necessary features necessary for operation over networks. As more computing
power is required, use of extended systems networked together is something
to consider.  This system is intended to help oversee job operation at all
sites by matching job requirements with available processing/storage/etc
power.

Cheers, Elton.

Elton Smith
Jefferson Lab
elton@jlab.org
(757) 269-7625