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HSF Weekly Meeting #172, 26 September, 2019

Present/Contributors: Graeme Stewart, Attila Krasznahorkay, Pere Mato, Marco Clemencic, Daniel Elvira, Paul Laycock, Gloria Corti, Eduardo Rodrigues, Andrea Rizzi, Liz Sexton-Kennedy, David Lange, Ben Morgan, Chris Jones, Guilherme Amadio, Michel Jouvin, Caterina Doglioni, Heather Gray, Sudhir Malik, Stefan Roiser, Kyle Knopfel

Apologies: Agnieszka (at a conference), Serhan Mete (ATLAS Software Tutorial)

News, general matters

• Post-JENAS HSF meeting on October 16th can take place, 16:00-17:30, at LAL and on Vidyo:
  • JENAS: Meeting ECFA + NuPECC (nuclear) + APPEC (astro), https://jenas-2019.lal.in2p3.fr
  • Idea of this meeting is to start the discussion with other communities, opening the road to discussions on more practical problems.
    • Example of successful tool sharing: Rucio, also more in GW
  • Practicalities
    • Speakers
      • We don’t mean to have an exhaustive list of speakers (would be difficult to do), this is a first brainstorming that can reach a relatively large audience due to the context.
      • Both APPEC and ECFA presidents will be present.
      • “Intro-to-HSF” speaker, any (remote/live) volunteers?
        • Better that it’s in person - Graeme can do it.
      • Plenty of options from astroparticle, none from nuclear:
        • Astroparticle options: (prioritize people @ workshop)
          • CTA (Stefan Schlensted, software responsible)
            • Not registered
          • SKA/DUNE (maybe invite Andy McNab)
            • Not registered
          • ESCAPE (Giovanni Lamanna)
            • Speaking, not registered → emailed first
          • DM (Chris Tunnell, was at JLab WS)
            • Not registered
        • Neutrino:
          • IceCube (Anna Frankoviak, analysis coordinator)
          • KM3NeT/ANTARES (Antoine Kouchner)
            • Michel could ask for contact, if not himself → emailed
        • Nuclear: any suggestions?
          • FAIR people → HSF/Graeme’s contacts
          • Jerome Lauret - BNL/STAR
          • Michel can ask as well
        • Graeme and Caterina can send invitations (today)
    • How to announce?
      • JENAS website once speakers.
      • HSF mailing list.
  • [Caterina at dark matter conference]: Astroparticle community very positive to this, but need to sit down together to work on something in practice as data/software needs are usually quite different
• UK RSE conference last week, Stefan Roiser presented the idea of a scientific software institute, with the idea of establishing better connections between natural science and computer science research. The presentation was well received though no concrete actions emerged from it immediately. From earlier brainstorming this year a one page statement with the main ideas of this initiative is available.
  • After the Computing seminar on Wed several met with the speaker who is also author of Alpaka (https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.08477). The possibility of holding a workshop on Alpaka as a concrete example of computer science and natural science collaboration (also including photon science & others) was discussed.
  • Alpaka training at CERN foreseen (would be useful for core software and reconstruction developers).
  • What we really want is for things to get into the C++ standard!
• GDB Chair (Ian Collier) has invited HSF to have a member on the GDB steering group.
  • Meets after each GDB and provides advice to the GDB chair about topics for future meetings.
  • We are positive about this.
  • Important to have an increasing recognition for software and the role of the HSF.

Activity and Working Group Updates

Data Analysis

• Nothing specific to report, work on preparing the preCHEP workshop (see later).
• Please note the EP seminar https://indico.cern.ch/event/849610/.
  • This is a new CERN EP Software Seminar series, that is a great initiative for showcasing software advances. We should make a general announcement of that on the HSF list.

Detector Simulation

• We will resume the topical meetings. The current plan is to have one before CHEP and another one at the end of November/beginning of December.
• We are discussing potential topics for them as well as for next year.
• Geant4 collaboration meeting this week has a session on Computing performance with reports from all experiments, https://indico.cern.ch/event/825306/sessions/314167/#20190926.

Reconstruction and Software Triggers

• Plans for this Fall:
  • Originally planned meeting on ATLAS/CMS/ALICE SW optimization in trigger and reconstruction on October 2nd, but may be postponed as many ATLAS trigger experts are organizing a hackathon. ATLAS speaker available on October 9th, no conflicts in the calendar if we do 5 to 6 pm (sacrificing 1h of ATLAS week) but need to check CMS/ALICE availability.
  • Next meetings: include more reconstruction, so talked to ATLAS reco experts, main interests to add to our original ones in the July report:
    • Priority is run-4 tracking
    • Particle flow cross-talk between ATLAS and CMS (and future colliders?)
    • Calorimeter reconstruction on ML
    • More futuristic: tracking on quantum computers
• More ambitious plans for the future: would be interested in thinking about a HSF COST action for the April deadline: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1facB4BKuN4zm66C9JtoOhDa68rqenIz-cWWqdhLpSfY/edit?usp=sharing.
  • Needs more people than us to be on board / think it’s useful.
  • Main pros:
    • Very open funding tool.
      • Once a consortium gets it, others can join afterwards as full members & access funding as well.
    • Could fund HSF (WLCG) workshops.
    • Would encourage student exchanges / stays at CERN to work with experts.
    • Can join up with other COST actions and work together on software
      • Some examples:
        • PARTICLEFACE (Precision particle physics) - https://particleface.eu.
        • VBSCAN (Vector Boson Scattering theory & experiment)- https://vbscanaction.web.cern.ch.
        • GWVERSE (Gravitational waves, black holes & fundamental physics) http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/ca/CA16104.
  • Main cons
    • Not much money compared to other grants.
      • Can consider it as “seed money” for bigger things.
    • Non-negligible paperwork, so we’d have to crowdsource…
  • Maybe something we discuss in a dedicated meeting?
• TODO: post HSF trigger&reco meeting live notes to our own webpage…

Software Tools

• Reminder: TAU Seminar
  • Monday October 14th at 5pm CERN time Room: 40/S2-D01
  • https://indico.cern.ch/event/845622/
  • Graeme and Serhan will meet (w/b 7 October) to discuss the details of installing the tool to /cvmfs/hsf.org.
• Thanks to Gordon, pinged Marc Goodner from VS Code about Visual Studio (waiting response).
  • Could do something more targeted towards our community - building on CVMFS and Docker. Should interact a bit in advance.
  • Ben - this would be very useful for DUNE and packaging.
• Planning to contact Luca and Guillermo from IT for a possible seminar/tutorial for using Intel Parallel Studio XE if people think that’d be useful.

PyHEP

• PyHEP 2019 workshop basically ready (just small things to be done at this stage).
• Final agenda is now online and will be advertised soon.

Training

• Training meeting on Monday discussed organisation for CERN Software Carpentries workshop at the end of November.
• Training “pre” blueprint meeting planned (to assess scaling of past carpentries material and plan future)..
• LAWSCHEP workshop in Mexico City, November 20-23,
  1. 25+5 min presentation on “Software training needs and challenges” (https://indico.cern.ch/event/847294/)</span>
• 19 Aug - 23 Aug, 2019 - ATLAS Software Carpentries Training (LBNL).
• Training meetings are now Mondays 15h30. Reminder
  • sign up to the training WG list.</span>

Packaging

• Meeting regularly each month, practical work focused on Spack as a prototype tool (work at FNAL and CERN).
• Next meeting 9 October.

Frameworks

• Trying to get a foothold for the moment…
• After some discussions with Chris and Kyle, we will have a first meeting for the group next Wednesday.
  • https://indico.cern.ch/event/851540/.
  • Gathering input from ATLAS & CMS at first, as that seems the easiest/safest as the first meeting 😛.
• In the first few meetings we will invite experiments to talk about their current efforts with their software frameworks, mainly about the issues that they want to solve in the non-too-distant future.
  • Will start with more topical meetings afterwards
• Plan to have 2 meetings until CHEP (with next Wednesday’s being one of them).
  • So that we may have something to talk about in a possible parallel meeting there. But on this we’ll just have to see what we have by the time we get there.

Workshops

Next HSF/WLCG Workshop

• First, many thanks to all of the people who prepared bids. This is non-trivial work and we really appreciate all the effort.
  • All bids had very attractive aspects!
• The feedback from the community highlighted positive aspects from every bid; overall it was very useful in helping us to make a choice.
• Based on logistical constraints and on the feedback we received we decided that the next workshop will be in Lund from 11-15 May 2020.
  • Congratulations to Caterina, Mattias and Oxana - we look forward to this a lot.
• We have a few logistical points we need to work on pretty soon.
  • It would be good to reduce costs for Early Career Researchers over more senior people (reduced registration and priority for less expensive accommodation).
    • (Pre-)booked 29 single rooms for ~60 EUR/night/person and 22 doubles for 30 EUR/night/person.
  • The Friday before the workshop (8 May) is a public holiday in France and in the UK.
    • Do we start later on Monday to allow people to travel to Lund on Monday, rather than Sunday?
    • What time to finish on Friday to allow for reasonable travel home?
      • From personal experience (Caterina): leave for airport ~3.5h before flight if no checked bags, there is a very convenient flight back to Geneva at 20:50. Finishing at lunchtime would allow for this and earlier flights.
  • Input on these points is already welcome!

Pre-CHEP, Analysis Systems: From Future Facilities to Final Plots (2-3 November)

• Workshop will be divided into two:
  • Saturday PM, 8 speakers laying out challenges and opportunities for analysis in the future.
  • Sunday AM, an interactive session with everyone involved in gathering ideas to tackle 4 key questions for the future of analysis.
    • Details to be circulated in the next few weeks.
• Timetable is in place:
  • https://indico.cern.ch/event/805983/timetable/#20191102.detailed.
• Local organisers have done a great job to provide us with suitable rooms for the Sunday activities - thanks to them.

Latin American Workshop on Software and Computing Challenges in HEP (Mexico, Nov 20-23)

• Latin American PIs have been able to find funding, so they will be present.
• Strong international presence.
• IRIS-HEP are participating and sponsoring (can fund US participants).
• Aim to have all of the sections of the CWP roadmap represented.
• Workshop will be small, but should have all key people and that can be a way to start cooperation (within Latin America and with the wider community).
• CMS and ATLAS invited.
• Hope that registration will be usable to support LA students to present their work (posters).
• Sponsorship from AWS fell though, unfortunately.

AOB

• Important experiment week dates seem to be a bit weak in the calendar for 2020.
  • Can some names individuals take charge of LHC + Belle II + Dune + …?
  • CMS - Liz can take care.
  • DUNE - not clear what state they are in.
  • Belle II - Paul will follow up
  • ATLAS - Graeme
  • ALICE and LHCb: ask computing coordinators?
• Next Rucio workshop will be at FNAL. Want to avoid clash with CTD (in Princeton).
  • David - CTD will now probably be at the end of the week April 20-24.

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