INDUSTRY

Last week, GridPP submitted its proposal for a UK Grid for LHC Exploitation, supporting all particle physics research. Submitted in response to PPARC's call of April, the GridPP3 proposal is for £35.2m over 3 and a half years. The full proposal, consisting of a main document and 10 appendices, is at its web site. It will be assessed by PPARC's Project Peer-Review Panel, starting in September. Submitted on behalf of GridPP by Dave Britton, Tony Doyle and Steve Lloyd, the final editing saw a 24 hour effort spread round the world. Tony explains, "Our distributed team was a real advantage here. As the document passed from Australia to Britain to Canada, the sun never set in the last stages of proposal writing. Members of the collaboration put a huge amount of work into the proposal, and I'd like to thank everyone for their help." Dave Britton was pleased with the final proposal, saying, "Although the proposal came together a little slower than scheduled, it is an impressive synthesis of material from many contributors, showing a unity of purpose and the strength of collaboration." The proposal is for a 7-month extension to GridPP2, followed by a three year co-development program with the LHC Computing Grid, the particle physics experiments and the institutes. This will provide a production Grid incorporating access to the Tier-0 Centre at CERN and the gLite middleware deployment releases, the UK Tier-1 Centre, integration of four distributed Tier-2s, operational and technical support across the Grid, and outreach. The GridPP Oversight Committee stated, in support of the proposal: "The GridPP2 programme has continued to impress and shows every likelihood of delivering against its ambitious programme. As a management team they have demonstrated tremendous stewardship of a complex technical area and have made excellent use of the available resources. As the largest UK e-Science project and part of the world's largest Grid, it has established the UK as a leading center for HEP on the Grid and is poised to consolidate this position through GridPP3. The Oversight Committee strongly endorses the existing programme of activity and would recommend funding the continuation project."