Grid computing in Pakistan: A case study of opening to large hadron collider experiments at CERN

Abstract

Performance, quality and reliability issues are becoming increasingly important for the emerging technologies like computing technology (CT). The purpose of this work is comparing and presenting operational performance of the grid nodes particularly in South Asia. The data analyzed here are derived from monitoring data of LCG (Large Hadron Collider Grid). The performance potential is analyzed by extracting data from the operational conditions of the grid sites. A grid computing facility was developed at sister institutes: Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) and Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (PIEAS), in collaboration with Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Computing Grid during early years of the present decade. The Grid facility “PAKGRID-LCG2” as one of the grid node in Pakistan was developed employing mainly local means and is capable of supporting local and international research and computational tasks in the domain of LHC Computing Grid. Functional status of the facility is presented in terms of number of jobs performed. The facility provides a forum to local researchers in the field of high energy physics to participate in the LHC experiments and related activities at European particle physics research laboratory (CERN), which is one of the best physics laboratories in the world. It also provides a platform of the emerging computing technology.

Keywords: Computing grid, large hadron collider, CERN, high energy physics, South Asia, LCG, virtual organization.