LHCbComputing Personnel status Preparation of discussion at next CB

Reminder (December LHCb week CB) m Currently available people insufficient to cover all activities o Estimate ~40 FTE needed o 22.6 FTE available for operations o ~5 FTE working on Gaudi and DIRAC development o ~3 FTE working on new activities m Shortfall ~10 FTE m Mandate computing management to o Prepare project breakdown into work packages o Seek voluntary commitments from institutes/countries o Prepare detailed report on sharing of responsibilities, including if needed a proposal for addressing any shortfall 2

Finding new people m Following CB presentation, ~3 new FTEs identified o Ongoing effort in some countries to look for new opportunities P New funding (but tied to specific R&D project) P Collaborations with IT departments m Detailed breakdown of computing tasks distributed to NCB members at end March o Disappointing response P Only three answers P Minor corrections to FTE numbers but no real difference to shortfall P Precise definition of needs and commitments difficult due to ill defined boundaries between core computing, physics software and operational activities outside the scope of the tasks document P No new institutional commitments m Maintaining a list of active personnel is virtually impossible o People leave and are not replaced o Institutes/countries do not report changes in available people 3

Where are we today? m FTE needed: 46.5FTE actual: 33.2 m Shortfalls in all areas 4

Where do they come from? 5

What is not covered? m Core Computing Infrastructure o Insufficient support for CERN infrastructure P e.g. followup of Vidyo issues o No effort available to support documentation and tutorials P e.g. software tutorials for newcomers discontinued o Development of infrastructure for software development, optimisation and testing postponed to next year m Core software development o Shortages everywhere, but in particular insufficient effort to build up expertise with vectorisation and efficient use of new languages (C++11) m Physics software o DaVinci coordinator o Gauss consolidation 6

What is not covered (2) m Distributed computing o Data management development P Support changes in computing model to optimise use of storage P Evolve system to new technologies m Data Preservation o Definition of strategies and policies for software preservation o Definition of affordable bit preservation strategies m Project Management o Coordination of developments with other experiments 7

Summary of current situation m Tasks breakdown confirms that: o We have sufficient effort in all areas to keep current computing infrastructure and software running efficiently. o We are forced to postpone R&D that will be essential for the latter part of Run 2 and for the upgrade. m A handful of countries have identified a few opportunities for new effort m Disappointingly: o Not all countries have given feedback o A number of positions have not been replaced o There are few if any openings in the collaboration for young physicists wishing to participate in computing activities 8

Options for the collaboration m Keep the status quo o Forget ambitious plans for upgrade HLT and data processing o Expect deterioration in quality of LHCb computing, as existing staff become more overstretched m Require minimum long term contribution to computing from each country o Will initiate series of dedicated meetings between collaboration management and countries to explore this o How can long term commitment be enforced? m Introduce a ‘tax’ for computing, to allow recruitment of missing manpower o Either ‘in kind’ if employed by the countries o Or M&O cash to hire at CERN (more expensive!) 9