In June 2004 the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) launched Data Challenge 2 (DC2) for the LHC Computing Grid (LCG). The job-distribution statistics that were recently released at September's ATLAS Software Workshop showed that Taiwan has produced 12% of the total ATLAS DC2 simulation data - submitted through the LCG resource broker - which is second only to the 14% produced at CERN. In fact, more than 700 Gbytes of input data were replicated and stored in the system located at the Academia Sinica Computing Centre (ASCC) in Taiwan.
With more than 70 sites joining in the LCG project, Taiwan plays a leading role in Asia. The Institute of Physics at the Academia Sinica, the National Taiwan University and the National Central University are involved in the ATLAS and CMS experiments, whereas the ASCC provides the Grid-related technology and resource support. The ASCC has been actively participating in the LCG project through various activities ranging from strategic planning to infrastructure deployment and services.
Acting as the Grid operation centre and global Grid user support, the ASCC not only helps to facilitate LCG installation in other Asian countries, such as China and Singapore, but also provides Grid-related training courses and symposia. Since 2002 the ASCC has hosted the annual International Symposium on Grid Computing, which introduces Grid concepts, technology and applications to Taiwan and neighbouring countries. Supported by CERN, and in conjunction with the 2004 Grid symposium, the first LCG Asia Workshop was held in July to further collaboration in Asia.
"The next step for the ASCC is to extend Grid technology to fields such as bioinformatics, digital archives and biodiversity informatics, which have large enough amounts of data to require a solution from Grid computing," said Simon C Lin, director of the ASCC. For the moment the ASCC has already built applications and prototypes for these fields based on LCG software infrastructure. With the experiences gained from the LCG, Asia envisages a solid future platform in the context of a worldwide Grid.
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Compiled by Hannelore Hämmerle and Nicle Crémel