Minutes of the Steering Board Meeting, 17 February 2009
Editor: Peter Gumplinger (17-FEB-2009)
Participants: J.Apostolakis, M.Asai, S.Banerjee, P.Cirrone, G.Cosmo, G.Folger,
P.Gumplinger, S.Incerti, V.Ivanchenko, K. Murakami, J.Perl
and D.Wright
1. Regular items
December 9th, 2008 SB meeting minutes approved
Pending Actions:
41.2 - No news (T. Sasaki still working).
42.3 - No news, remains Open.
44.1 - JA sent to DW a proposed mission, to be closed.
44.2 - Nothing yet on the user's guide, GF/VI, Ongoing.
45.2 - Put aside to G4 design review 2010, Closed.
46.3 - Done, Closed.
47.1 - Leave pending for another month for having a complete picture.
Are advanced examples included in testing?
47.3 - Repeating issue, situation unchanged since last time.
49.3 - To be Closed by end of this meeting - message with proposal from JA.
49.4 - Exists but not yet available from the pages.
49.5 - Status to be confirmed.
51.1 - No convergence for potential interface, Done. Closed.
51.2 - Remains open, no progress on this, DW requires clarification.
51.3 - First draft of Twiki page from JA available (JA to provide URL),
edited by VI, still missing contributions.
51.4 - To be "donated" to M.Verderi as new responsible (was misdirected to JA).
51.5 - Still Open.
51.6 - Done. Closed.
NEW ACTIONS
===========
52.1 - M.Verderi to organise meeting within one month for discussing
proposal for double differential cross-section.
52.2 - H.Kurasige to inform on potential impact of the particle-change
revision listed in work-plan for 2009.
52.3 - J.Apostolakis, M.Asai to inform people involved regarding the
position of the Geant4 SB for the "Nano5" issue and use of the
Geant4 CVS repository.
2. Outcome / Recommendations of Delta Review
Slides for the close-out session (JA, to be linked).
First feedback from Delta Reviewers emailed by JA to SB on Jan. 27/09.
No final document yet, aiming for end of Feb, JA to contact reviewers.
Summary of Outcome:
==================
Review acknowledges significant progress, changes of position about FLUKA
collaboration, requests more transparent planning, shows strong interest in
multi-threating, advices on professional computing help, current installation
tools will soon become obsolete, comments on manpower suggesting more
aggressive recruitment needed from new institutions not yet in G4, and expects
a regularly updated development plan (in private discussions with JA)
JA/MA decided to adopt the process of this past review also in the future;
they will propose early 'proto' responsible persons for each
issue/recommendation and respond in similar fashion.
3. Proposed work plans and items for 2009
- Run, Event and Detector Response: MA expects parallel navigation to be finished
in 2009 and finalize 'coupled transportation; cylindrical mesh has performance
issue in navigator, need for voxilization; multi-core extension has funding
issues, to become part of global category.
- Tracking: T. Sasaki sent email - no new development items.
- Particles and Track: precision problem tracking in time with very slow
neutrons.
- Geometry and Transport: MA (item 3) prototype new interface for field
accuracy setting (to come from ATLAS)
- Generic Processes and Materials: reverse MC ongoing.
- Electromagnetic Standard Physics: question about "Apply Cuts" per geometry
region, VI unsure this is a good idea, process has 'apply cuts' filter only
as energy threshold, issue with e+ range to energy conversion (VI to find out
what is done for e+ today), should become its own action item in the list;
"forced interaction" in collaboration with biasing WG, no person assigned to
this, also requires coordination with Hadr. and Generic Process WGs.
In general, some of EM Standard WG planning needs to be more exposed as
collaboration planning; for example: variable density.
- Low Energy EM Physics: debugging in progress (JA requested progress report
within a month); find out what exactly is 'triple conversion'.
- Hadronic Physics: (relevant are pages 19-22), coordination between hadr. and
EM WG validation, survey number of ways models are initialized, regular
bench marking, continuity in validation.
- User and Category Interfaces: G4UIExecutive class to add UI options centrally
for all examples (like vis-options are now).
- Visualisation: selected sub-issues to be exposed to the collaboration as a
whole; boolean solid visualization solution proposed by G. Barrand not so
simple after all (he has no time), OpenGL hardwired option/direct option a
la ROOT implementation (follow up off-line).
- Software Management: CERN will stop support of CVS by mid 2010.
- Advanced Examples: find out from M.G. Pia her current involvement for examples
she is listed responsible for.
- 2009 planed developments: final version will be released and exposed to users
in a couple weeks.
AOB
---
Proposed new collaborators: students are automatic once they have made a
contribution, the senior developers (Paul Gueye, Christina Zacharaton, Walter
Brown) become collaboration members after a two week comments period.
Release scheduling: correction patch for 9.2 in early March, tentative schedule
for 9.3.beta on June 5 and for 9.3 on Dec 18. (this scheduling is forced on us
because of personal changes at CERN occurring in June).
Request for use of CVS repository: the members present agreed that outside
development does not belong to G4 CVS unless it is submitted to, reviewed and
approved by the G4 Steering Board;
Conditions on a G4 collaborator: has been addressed during a meeting in
June 2006 (JA to review the outcome of that meeting); arguments were made to
not push out a person if he/she only maintains a past contribution - certainly
not for the kernel where latent expertise is an asset (V.I).
No G4 tutorial is yet scheduled for 2009; S.I. is considering one in France in
July if there is enough interest.
Meeting closed at 11:00.
Meeting Date
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 - 12:00