New Computing Division Gearing Up
As Fermilab's new Computing Division begins moving forward, Division Head Tom Nash and his staff are implementing the new organizational tools that, in Nash's words, "will bring together computer-related activities that support the immediate and long-term needs of high-energy physics [at Fermilab]. Fermilab has been widely recognized for its successes in supporting its experimental program with accessible central computing, data acquisition tools and capabilities, and forward thinking computer developments. The new organization is to build on Fermilab’s successes with the people that made up this dynamic [computing] community. Its driving goal is to establish a major center of excellence in the operation and development of computing and data acquisition for high-energy physics. This is a key pillar of Fermilab’s long-term future."
Communication, both within the Division and between the Division and its clients, is seen as very important. Nash has instituted Strategy Management Teams to “determine a coordinated direction for the various interrelated activities of the Division. They will have heavy user participation and will be the primary management mechanism in the Division [and] will spawn working groups on specific issues,” Nash said. “We would prefer to think of our clients as participants in the strategic-decision-making process.” These teams will be chaired by the three Associate Division Heads, Jowl Butler, Irwin Gaines, and Hack Pfister. They will be “responsible for maintaining wide-open communications channels, with emphasis on those [channels] reaching outside the Division.”
Butler is responsible for the Division’s close relations with experimenters and other Division clients. He will also coordinate the activities of the Central and Distributed Computing Departments, chairing the Offline Computing Strategy Meetings and coordinating offline computing activities.
Gaines will coordinate the Division Management Teams and the project-review process. He will also coordinate Data Acquisition R&D activities and chair the Data Acquisition Strategy Meetings.
Pfister is charged with leading the effort to track technology and identify relevant advanced system and collaborative R&D opportunities in industry and computer science, and then coordinating the above with the activities of the computing departments. He will chair the Technology Tracking/Computer R&D Strategy meetings, coordinating computer R&D.
"We recognize that the need to move toward evolutionary requirements implies that we must have a continuing, intimate relationship between the Division's support elements and the end user," Nash said. "We are aware that we cannot know in advance of a major and complex activity what the activity is going to require."
Charged with seeing to it that the Division and its users understand such evolving requirements is the ACCESS Liaison Group, attached to the Division Office. This group will facilitate a wide-open communication channel between the Division and Fermilab's experimenters (and other Division clients).
The Division's table of organization reveals five new departments. The Central Computing Department, headed by Peter Cooper, will oversee operation of Fermilab's in-place major shared central computing resources, as well as any future Unix-based centralized production systems.
The Distributed Computing Department, headed by Al Thomas, has responsibility for local and area networks and other communication; operation of central DST analysis farms and the VAX Clusters; support for departmental clusters, workstations, networked PC's, and other peripherals; and maintenance of VAX, Unix, and related software.
There are two Data Acquisition Departments. The Data Acquisition Support Department, led by Vicky White, includes PREP, which is presently responsible for online and data acquisition systems for the forthcoming fixed-target run.
The Data Acquisition Electronics Department, under Ed Barsotti, is presently participating in silicon detector readout development and study of a high-speed DAQ switch.
The Computing R&D Department (Joe Biel, Head), is descended from the Advanced Computer Program (ACP). It is developing ACP II software and hardware and the ACPMAPS lattice gauge processor.