Information Technologies

The mission of the Laboratory of Information Technology (LIT) is two-fold: a) to serve the scientists of JINR and its Member States in the pursuit of their research projects by developing Methods, Algorithms and Software for Modelling Physical Systems, Mathematical Processing and Analysis of Experimental Data; b) to assure that the IT infrastructure and IT know-how of JINR experts are always of latest state of the art. Since JINR and other big science centres depend on the commodity of IT hardware, a long-term view must look for great flexibility in the system. Presently, the JINR Infrastructure has been developed in close connection with CERN and other Institutes of Nuclear and High Energy Physics. During the last 15 years, a distributed computing infrastructure has been created for processing and storing data from the LHC experiments. Each of the four outstanding scientific experimental facilities at the LHC, namely ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb, is being run by collaborations, each of which has several thousand scientists from several hundred institutes distributed worldwide. Therefore, a geographically distributed computing environment like grid for processing and storing experimental data of all LHC experiments, i.e. the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), has been created. About 1 000 000 processors are geographically distributed in more than 170 data processing centres from 42 countries. They are combined into a unified computing environment within the WLCG infrastructure, capable of managing hundreds of petabytes of data, providing access to computing resources and data storage systems for the entire community, and integrating national and international structures. JINR is a strong part in this system. Projecting the development of Information Technologies of the Institute into the future must take into account the latest development of some large experiments, where huge computing power is or will be installed at the front end of the detectors, thus substantially reducing the amount of data transmitted to the distributed computing centres in the world. At the same time, data taking rates in the LHC experiments are steadily increasing, leading to an increase in data volumes. The original concept of grid as an implementation of the HTC (High Throughput Computing) concept has changed to a complex, heterogeneous computing system combining computing resources of various concepts: HTC, HPC (High Performance Computing), computing resources provided on a voluntary basis (Volunteer computing), commercial and non-commercial cloud computing resources. Currently, research on the development of novel architectural and functional principles of the WLCG distributed computing infrastructure is carried out by the community of LHC computer specialists [1] and other scientific world centres in the field of high-energy physics; in 2020, it is planned to complete the preparation of relevant technical projects (Computing TDR). JINR specialists are part of today's community of experts. It should be noted that the JINR research program for the next decades is aimed at conducting ambiguous and large-scale experiments at the Institute basic facilities and in the framework of worldwide collaborations. This program is connected with the implementation of the NICA megaproject, the construction of new experimental facilities, the JINR neutrino program, the modernization of the LHC experimental facilities (CMS, ATLAS, ALICE), the programs on condensed matter physics and nuclear physics. The implementation of the projects mentioned above requires adequate and commensurable investments in the IT systems providing the processing and storage of increasing data volumes. The experience of recent years shows that the progress in obtaining research results directly depends on the performance and efficiency of computing resources. In this regard, the further development and performance extension of the JINR LIT Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex (MICC) [2,3] as well as the provision of novel IT solutions to the Complex users and the increase in its operation efficiency are the uppermost tasks of the Laboratory of Information Technologies. The JINR computing infrastructure consists of numerous computing components and IT technologies to solve JINR tasks, from theoretical studies to experimental data processing, storage and analysis. The JINR MICC is the key element of this infrastructure and plays a defining role in research, which requires modern computing power and data storage systems. They are the IT ecosystem for the NICA project (BM@N, MPD, SPD), Tier1 of the CMS experiment at JINR, Tier2/CICC providing support to the experiments at the LHC (ATLAS, ALICE, CMS), FAIR (CBM, PANDA) and other large-scale experiments as well as support to users of JINR Laboratories and the JINR Member States (MPD/NICA, BESIII, LRB, FLNR, DLNP, BLTP, FLNP); the integrated cloud environment of the JINR Member States [4] for support of JINR users and experiments (NICA, ALICE, BESIII, NOvA, Daya Bay, JUNO, etc.); the HybriLIT platform [5] with the "Govorun" supercomputer as a major resource for high-performance hybrid computing. In summary, LIT plans to establish an IT ecosystem, i.e. a dynamically growing IT platform, which responds to the rapidly developing IT world. The connection to CERN and FAIR will influence the JINR strategy. Different to most other IT groups in the world, JINR LIT is providing and will provide forefront service to scientists working in JINR collaborations, on- and off-site of Dubna, by continuing developing 'Methods, Algorithms and Software for Modelling Physical Systems, Mathematical Processing and Analysis of Experimental Data'. Although many of these tasks are being done by individual experts in experiment collaborations, LIT as a base of these experts can guarantee a high level of professionalism strongly needed in Data- and Code-handling. The LIT manpower development must reflect the fast-changing world of IT by providing attractive positions to both promising young and highly qualified IT specialists.