The MONARC Project (Models of Networked Analysis at Regional Centres) for LHC Experiments
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments have envisaged Computing Models
(CM) involving hundreds of physicists doing analysis at institutions around
the world. CMS and ATLAS also are considering the use of Regional Centers,
each of which could complement the functionality of the CERN Center. They
are intended to facilitate the access to the data; with more efficient and
cost-effective data delivery to the groups in each world region, using
national networks of greater capacity than may be available on
intercontinental links.
The LHC Models encompass a complex set of wide-area, regional and
local-area networks, a heterogeneous set of compute- and data-servers, and
a yet-to-be determined set of priorities for group-oriented and
individuals' demands for remote data. Distributed systems of this scope and
complexity do not exist yet, although systems of a similar size to those
foreseen for the LHC experiments are predicted to come into operation by
around 2005 at large corporations.
In order to proceed with the planning and design of the LHC Computing
Models, and to correctly dimension the capacity of the networks and the
size and characteristics of Regional Centers, it is essential to conduct a
systematic study of these distributed systems. This project therefore
intends to simulate and study network-distributed computing architectures,
data access and data management systems that are major components of the
CM, and the ways in which the components interact across networks. The
project will bring together the efforts and relevant expertise from the LHC
experiments and LHC R&D projects, as well as from the current or
near-future experiments that are already engaged in building distributed
systems for computing, data access, simulation and analysis.
As a result of this study, we expect to deliver a set of tools for
simulating candidate CM of the experiments, and a set of common guidelines
to allow the experiments to formulate their final Models. Distributed
databases are an important part of the CM to be studied. The RD45 project
has developed considerable expertise in the field of Object Oriented
Database Management Systems (ODBMS), and this project intends to benefit
from the RD45 experience and to cooperate with RD45 as appropriate, in the
specific areas where the work of the two projects (necessarily) overlap.
The proposed project intends to investigate questions that are largely
complementary to RD45, such as network performance and traffic
prioritizing, for a variety of applications that must coexist and share the
network resources.
Collaborators
Worldwide membership include: Tufts University, Fermilab, Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA
http://www.cern.ch/MONARC/