Unified Programming Environment for Quantum Chromodynamics
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In this snapshot of gluon fields from a supercomputer QCD simulation, the gluon fields are
started in a nonuniform, chaotic state (left), and quickly diffuse into the full volume of space simulated on the computer (middle and right).
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According to the Standard Model of Particles and Interactions, the fundamental constituents
of subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons, are quarks and gluons. The equations
governing the forces among quarks have been known for decades. These forces are mediated by
particles called gluons, in much the same way that electromagnetic forces are mediated by
photons. However, unlike the forces of electricity and magnetism, they become stronger as quarks
are pulled apart; this remarkable behavior, which is responsible for the permanent confinement of
quarks, is not captured by other force or field theories. The part
of the Standard Model that describes this strong interaction, or color force, between quarks
and gluons is called Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD). Only large scale numerical simulations
have allowed us to calculate, to high precision, QCD quantities such as the masses and lifetimes
of particles containing quarks (i.e. protons, neutrons, etc.). In QCD, quark and gluon fields
are defined on a four-dimensional space-time grid called a lattice. The quantum fluctuations
of these fields are calculated by Monte Carlo methods. Under its SciDAC grants the U.S. QCD
Collaboration (www.usqcd.org) has created a unified programming environment (www.usqcd.org/software.html)
for large scale simulations of lattice QCD. With it, they have performed a wide variety of
calculations. These include investigations at unprecedented precision of the properties of strongly interacting matter
at high temperatures and densities, investigations of the structure and interactions of hadrons,
and determinations of the fundamental parameters of the Standard Model, which encompasses our
current knowledge of the forces of nature.
discovery highlights archive
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Pete Beckman Appointed ALCF Project Director
Pete Beckman has been appointed project director of the ALCF. He also will serve as acting division director for the Leadership Computing Facility. Pete will be responsible for bringing the 500-TF IBM BG/P through acceptance testing and into early science, bringing the 100-TF BG/P into INCITE production, upgrading the storage and I/O systems, and transitioning the ALCF organization into steady-state operations. He will also recruit additional staff and users to the ALCF and chart a path for the future.
Pete previously served as the ALCF's chief architect and has more than a decade of experience in large-scale computing and project management. He has worked in systems software for parallel computing, operating systems, and Grid computing for 20 years. He also worked in industry, serving as vice president of Turbolinux's worldwide engineering efforts, managing development offices in the United States, Japan, China, Korea, and Slovenia.
scientist highlights archive |
The Open Science Grid(OSG) Consortium: Collaborative Science over the Grid
The Open Science Grid (OSG) is one of several SciDAC-2 projects that are at the forefront of the continuing United States investments in Grids. OSG itself is leading in the provision of a community based, high-throughput nationally distributed infrastructure for a broad sweep of scientific research. Today OSG provides access to computational resources at more than sixty sites across the US – including NERSC, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab, more than six campus-wide university infrastructures, and many large and small university sites across the country.
OSG relies on today's state of the art networks for science, and advanced experimental research networks to support high throughput data distribution and computing for the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, existing DOE Office of Science physics experiments, bioinformatics, chemistry, climate research, computer science and other domains. The infrastructure today is accepting more than thirty percent of the data and providing more than twenty-five percent of the analysis throughput for the LHC.
Through the Virtual Data Toolkit, OSG supplies an integrated suite of software technologies used on the Grid based on the core Condor and Globus technologies created by the “fathers” of the Grid at Universities in the US, and augmented by tools and utilities from many places including Europe.
OSG is supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science SciDAC-2 program from the High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics and Advanced Software and Computing Research programs; and the National Science Foundation Math and Physical Sciences, Office of Cyber-Infrastructure and Office of International Science and Engineering Directorates.
Contact Ruth Pordes (ruth@fnal.gov) or Miron Livny(miron@cs.wisc.edu) for more details.
URL: www.opensciencegrid.org
See also "Grids, Clouds, and the Internet"
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