• • • Middleware Tools (gLite workload and data managment) AMGA, GANGA, GRID portal and WISDOM)

• • Hardware and Systems (PROOF)

• • Workflow (TAVERNA)

• • Extended precision (beyond double precision)

AMGA: AMGA is a metadata catalogue that provides a tool to store, query and replicate metadata on the Grid. AMGA uses a database backend to store metadata and uses ODBC in order to be database implementation independent. AMGA uses Grid certificates or VOMS proxies in order to give access to grid users. After a user is authenticated to an AMGA server he/she can make queries and store metadata about anything (files, proteins, datasets etc).

GANGA: Ganga is an easy-to-use frontend for job definition and management, implemented in Python. It has been developed to meet the needs of the ATLAS and LHCb for a Grid user interface, and includes built-in support for configuring and running applications based on the Gaudi / Athena framework common to the two experiments. Ganga allows trivial switching between testing on a local batch system and large-scale processing on Grid resources.

WISDOM: The WISDOM initiative aims at developing new drugs for neglected and emerging diseases with a particular focus on malaria. Its specificity is to extensively rely on emerging information technologies to provide new tools and environments for drug discovery and development. Its main goal is to boost research and development on neglected diseases by fostering the use of open source information technology for drug discovery.

GRID Portal (BioInformatics): Bioinformatic analysis of data produced by complete genome sequencing projects is one of the major challenge of the next years. Integrating up-to-date databanks and relevant algorithms is a clear requirement of such an analysis. Grid computing, such as the infrastructure provided by the EGEE European project, would be a viable solution to distribute data, algorithms, computing and storage resources for Genomics. Providing bioinformatician with a good interface to grid infrastructure will also be a challenge that should be successful. GPS@ web portal, Grid Protein Sequence Analysis , aims to be such an user-friendly interface for these grid genomic resources on the EGEE grid.

BOINC: Open-source software for volunteer computing and grid computing.

ROOT: ROOT is a framework for data processing, born at CERN, at the heart of the research on high-energy physics. Every day, thousands of physicists use ROOT applications to analyze their data or to perform simulations.

PROOF: Parallel Root Facility

TAVERNA: The Taverna workbench is a free software tool for designing and executing workflows. Taverna allows users to integrate many different software tools, including web services from many different domains, such as chemistry, music and social sciences. Bioinformatics services include those provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, The European Bioinformatics Institute, the DNA Databank of Japan (DDBJ), SoapLab , BioMOBY and EMBOSS.

Geant4: Geant4 is a toolkit for the simulation of the passage of particles through matter. Its areas of application include high energy, nuclear and accelerator physics, as well as studies in medical and space science. The two main reference papers for Geant4 are published in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A 506 (2003) 250-303, and IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 53 No. 1 (2006) 270-278.

Form: FORM is a Symbolic Manipulation System. FORM is a system that tries to use the computer resources as efficiently as possible, while at the same time trying to be as general as possible. Its internal representations are far more compact than those of the popular Computer Algebra Systems (CAS), but at the same time this has not been overdone as speed of processing is the major optimization criterion. What is special about it though is that formulas can be disk based without big penalties in the performance. This means that the available diskspace puts the practical limits on the size of expressions, rather than the amount of RAM memory.

Program Overview

The scientific program is tailored to the needs of the each specific sessions. The organizing committee will select the best suited topics based on the expertise of the attendance. Here follows an open list of possible topics

1. Distributed Computing
   • GRID technology
     • Concept
     • Middleware Tools
     • Demos and exercises
   • Public or "volunteer" computing (BOINC)
2. Parallel computing
   • Hardware and Systems
   • MPI programming
3. Data Analysis methods and tools
   • Artificial Intelligence tools and methods * Neural nets * Genetic, evolution Algorithms
   • Pattern recognitions, Minimization and fits
   • Data Analysis and the "Root" system
   • Multivariate Analysis
4. Experimental Simulation and high precision computing
   • Geant 4
5. Symbolic Computing * Maple, Form
6. Embedded and real-time Computing * Robotics * Data Acquisition

-- DenisPerretGallix - 26 Mar 2009