Event Report
Report author:
Chris Johnson & Chris Maynard
Event organiser(s):
Chris Johnson & Chris Maynard
Title of event:
Hacklatt 08
Date of event:
1st – 3rd April, 2008 – 3 day event
Target Audience:
Members of the Lattice QCD community writing code or using grid
management tools
Objectives:
Original objectives:
The main topics that we proposed to address at the workshop were:
•
Overview of data-grid infrastructures, both national and international.
•
Overview on the compute hardware and software.
•
Using the QCDgrid compute and data application suite to interact with the UKQCD Grid.
•
Data sharing within the ILDG. Tools, services, and metadata.
•
Working with the QCDOC and possibly BlueGene machines.
•
Using particle physics libraries and applications (QDP/Chroma and CPS) on QCDOC, linux
clusters and local university resources.
Chronology of Event:
The webpages for this event can be found on the UKQCD’s website:
http://ukqcd.epcc.ed.ac.uk/training/2008/index.html
The following talks were given at Hacklatt 08:
•
Introduction Chris Maynard, EPCC, University of Edinburgh
Chris Maynard welcomed the participants and explained the format of the workshop and
associated social events.
•
Algorithms Tony Kennedy, School of Physics, University of Edinburgh
Tony Kennedy gave an introduction to the Hybrid Monte-Carlo methods used as a basis for
most QCD calculations.
•
ChiPT Jonathan Flynn, University of Southampton
Joanathan Flynn gave an introduction to Chiral Perturbation Theory explaining how the theory
works and how it can be used.
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•
Milc Carleton De Tar, University of Utah
Carleton De Tar described the Milc code. His set of talks included a practical session on using
the Milc code where participants were invited to build and run applications using Milc.
•
QCDgrid George Beckett , EPCC, University of Edinburgh
George Beckett gave a talk on QCDgrid, recently renamed as “DiGS”. His talk described the
history of the QCDgrid/DiGS software, how it works and how it is set up on the UKQCD grid.
•
CVS Chris Johnson, EPCC, University of Edinburgh
Chris Johnson gave a description of the version control software CVS (Concurrent Versions
System). The talk described the basic philosophy of CVS as well as giving an introduction to
the most important commands needed when using CVS.
•
Machines Raffaele Tripiccione
Raffaele Tripiccione gave an overview of the machines used by the lattice QCD community
over the past few years explaining how suitable machines are chosen and giving and overview
of the associated costs of using such machines.
•
Data munging Chris Maynard, EPCC, University of Edinburgh
Chris Maynard explained the philosophy behind the UK approach to using metadata, how to
write metadata and how to put data and associated metadata on to UKQCD’s grid via DiGS.
•
Chroma Balint Joo
Balint Joo gave a talk and tutorial on the Chroma code explaining how code is designed and
built together with an explanation of how Chroma XML files are written.
•
ILDG (International Lattice Data Grid) Dirk Pleiter
Dirk Pleiter explained the philosophy behind the ILDG project and how this fits together with
each of the participating countries’ grids. Dirk explained how to get access to this grid and
explained future plans for the grid.
Event Achievements:
The Hacklatt 08 workshop was primarily aimed at those within the UK Lattice QCD community but was
also opened up to all those working on QCD codes. The workshop was considered a great success by
all who attended and succeeded in all its aims. It was attended by 35 people making it the most wellattended Hacklatt workshop to date. The feedback we received from all participants was extremely
positive and it is clear that the workshop has strengthened the collaboration as a whole as the younger
members (students and post-docs) were able to meet each other and key code developers both
internal and external to UKQCD. The availability of funding from eScience Institute for speakers
allowed us to invite four international speakers all of whom are experts in their field. We hope to repeat
the Hacklatt workshop in 2009, building on the success of the 2008 workshop. During the workshop,
we took advantage of the presence of 4 members of the meta-data working group of the ILDG (the
groups which agrees the meta-data standards for lattice QCD data), to hold an impromptu meeting.
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