US grid projects: PPDG and iVDGL

The Particle Physics Data Grid (PPDG) will develop, evaluate and deliver vitally needed Grid-enabled tools for data intensive collaboration in particle and nuclear physics. The goals and plans are guided by the immediate, medium term and longer-term needs and perspectives of the LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS. This effort was funded by DOE MATHEMATICAL information and computer sciences and by High Energy and Nuclear Physics. The proposed international Virtual-Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL) will have unprecedented scale and scope, comprising heterogeneous computing and storage resources in the U.S., Europe-and ultimately other regions-linked by high-speed networks, and operated as a single system for the purposes of interdisciplinary experimentation in Grid-enabled data-intensive scientific computing. Such systems will be needed in the coming decades as a central element of our information-based society