Minutes of Geant4 Steering Board Meeting of 9 April 2009

9 April 2009, 08:30-11:30 CET

Present:
CERN: J.Apostolakis, G.Cosmo, G.Folger, V.Ivanchenko;
SLAC: M.Asai, J.Perl, D.Wright;
KEK: K.Amako, K.Murakami, T.Sasaki;
INFN LNS:P.Cirrone, G.Cuttone
TRIUMF: P.Gumplinger
IN2P3 Bordeaux: S.Incerti
Excuses: S.Banerjee, M.Maire, M.Verderi

Editors: J.Apostolakis, V.Ivanchenko
Last revision: 26th June, 2009, 20:25 CEST

  1. Regular items

The minutes of the SB meeting of February 17th, 2009 were approved.

Pending Actions:

41.2 - A simple manual needed

42.3 - The benchmark, G.Cosmo will help G.Folger to integrate

44.2 - To be closed and concentrate efforts on web documentation with priority how to use and how to change

47.1 - Is closed

47.3 - Is closed

49.4 - Is closed

49.5 - Is closed

51.2 - Remains open, Dennis Wright creating web page

51.3 - First TWiki page exist, still missing contributions.

51.4 - Still open

51.5 - Still Open, preliminary list of responsibles : T.Nikitina (geometry), V.Ivanchenko (EM standard), P.Gueye (EM low-energy), A.Ribon (hadronics)

52.1 - Still open

52.2 - M.Asai reported: no impact on design, only performance improvement, is closed

52.3 - is closed because activity was not proposed to the Collaboration

New actions

53.1 - Physics list task force, to verify existence and put in place in regular system testing of at least one test exercising every single physics-list.

53.2 - Category Coordinators, to check coverage of system testing for their own category, report to the SB and extend testing where needed.

Feedback from Technical Forum

The request of three LHC experiments (ATLAS, CMS, LHCb) was presented for the extention support of Geant4 Release 9.2 until December 2010, in view of the LHC planned run Nov 2009 - Nov 2010. ( See the minutes TF 10-March-2009 ) The SB agreed to provide patches for critical and important issues for release 9.2 until November 2010 for the LHC experiments. Fixes for other applications domains will be provided until November 2009. However users can register and document their need for similar support via the Geant4 Technical Forum.

Coordinators and directory taggers are requested to identify important fixes for potential inclusion in future patches, and to notify the release coordinator (Gabriele Cosmo). Taggers with experience of CVS will be asked to copy fixes to the patch branch using the established procedures.

Improvement of simple and full documentation of physics lists, was requested by Tom Roberts (Muons Inc and FNAL)

A discussion of open issues from Underground experiments with liasons for this community (Luciano Pandola and Henrique Araujo) is being arranged.

Releases in 2009

Are any items unclear or conflicting in existing development plans

The potential for prototyping materials with varying density was not adopted for 2009. Instead a prepatory meeting was proposed for the second half of 2009.

It was decided that the release of December 2009 will be a minor release, to be named Geant4 9.3.

Can obsolete functionality can be deleted, if it is visible to the user ? Old implementations (functionality and physics models) which will not be improved must be declare as deprecated, and should be deleted at the next major release (10.0). Classes which affect only advanced users can be deprecated or obsoleted faster - but good explanations are required for the release note section on code migration.

Other 2009 Milestones

  • Agreed on task force on improvement of physics lists web pages and documentation; leading it are Dennis Wright (HEP) and Pablo Cirrone (for Medical).
  • In preparation of 2010 Architecture and Design review requested drafting of scope/mandate and first timetable. (action Makoto?)
  • Performance improvement discussion is planned to continue at dedicated meeting in July.

Multi-core and multi-threading ‘project’

  • Short report from Gene Cooperman Xin Dong was presented.
  • Agreed on task force to assess current multi-core prototypes and recommend to the SB whether how to adapt Geant4 to enable it to become multi-thread enabled. Key issues identified include the maintainability of the multi-threading, the reproducibility of results, the testing suite.
    • Prepare plan whether/when/how to integrate annotations and/or revisions of prototype, tools
    • Identifying potential simple design changes to simplify multi-process and multi-threading
      • First assessment
      • Potential prototype

Geant4 Delta Review

Agreed that responsible persons will be assigned per recommendation/issue. Responses requested to proposed assignments. Agreed on the priorities of the recommendation/issues. Process to prepare plans for action, disagrement or request for clarification. Timetable agreed: two rounds 1) 6 wks to May 21, 2) June 30th (tbc.)

( Priority to issues potentially affecting 2009 plans.)

AOB

Geant4 Collaboration and Users Workshop, Catania (Italy), 14-21 October

Agreed on Giacomo and Joseph as lead authors of Book Chapter on Geant4 in Radiotherapy.

The meeting adjourned at 11:30.

Meeting Date

Thursday, April 9, 2009 - 12:00