Generic Components of the eScience Infrastructure Ecosystem
an IEEE eScience 14 workshop on tools for distributed infrastructures for research

At the high energy and cosmic frontiers of physics, the challenges facing us in dealing with measured and reference data sets are two regular twins: size as well as complexity. By combining the quantitative statistics methods of HEP with generic pattern-matching algorithms, machine learning, and the advances in vectorisation that benefit both GPU and massive multi-processor programming, we stand a chance of dealing with the next generation experiments - if we manage the complex task of integrating these generic components in the large existing scientific code base and sustain them for the next decades: as much of a challenge as developing the (very promising) methods and tools in the first place!

Workshop Programme

Session 1 (09.00 - 10.30): building software as an infrastructure

• 09.10 Sustainable software as an infrastructure
  Oxana Smirnova, Lund University
• 09.40 An infrastructure for file distribtion: evolving from software distribution to data
  Radu Popescu, CERN
• 10.10 SoftDrive.nl: end-user managed software distribution with CVMFS
  Dennis van Dok, Nikhef

Session 2 (11.00 - 12.30): building the components

• 11.00 Collaborative analysis at a global scale with SWAN: Jupyter-as-a-service
  Massimo Lamanna, CERN
• 11.30 Reproducible data, reproduceable analysis: today, tomorrow, next decade
  Tibor Simko, CERN
• 12.00 Getting researchers to the data: data from the lake
  Jaroslava Schovancová, CERN

Session 3 (13.30 - 15.00): scaling the services for the next decade

• 13.30 Building next decade's infrastructure: by yourself, or public in the HNSciCloud?
  Martin Brandt, SURFsara and the HNSciCloud project
• 14.00 Infrastructures for Research: the science of deployability and operations
  Maurice Bouwhuis, SURFsara
• 14.30 Plenary discussion: what mechanisms do we have to put in place to ensure our eScience Infrastructure in the next decades?

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The Generic Components workshop is orgasised by the Nikhef Physics Data Processing group for advanced computing for research.