MUST platform

Inaugurated in 2007, MUST mesocentre is a computing and data storage center shared between Savoie Mont Blanc University (USMB) and the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). It was awarded the “IN2P3 digital platform” label by the eponymous institute which develops and coordinates French research in particle physics, nuclear physics and astroparticle physics.

Hosted in the mechatronics building on Annecy-le-Vieux campus, MUST has a 170m2 computer room containing 235 computing servers (i.e. 5,200 dedicated processors) and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage.

It is operated by a team of USMB / CNRS IT experts belonging to both the Annecy Laboratory of Particle Physics and the Annecy Laboratory of Theoretical Physics. These ensure that the platform is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Due to its history, the mesocenter is above all a key player in the Global Computing Grid (WLCG) allowing physicists to analyze the LHC data (ATLAS and LHCb experiments) produced at Cern in Geneva. It is a “Tier2” type grid node according to the nomenclature of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.

Via the European Grid Initiative (EGI), MUST also provides its computing resources to other experiments of international scope in scientific fields associated with high energy physics: in gamma astronomy with the HESS and CTA observatories, in cosmology with the future LSST telescope, for the design of future linear colliders with the CLIC-ILC project. It also participates in the GEANT 4 software infrastructure which allows the simulation of the passage of particles through matter.

At the same time, MUST is opening up its capabilities to a very large community of local users to help them carry out their research. The applications are diverse: theoretical physics, materials sciences, earth sciences, information processing, artificial intelligence…

Finally, MUST intends to support companies in their digital transition through the IDEFICS project.

Contact : Stéphane JEZEQUEL