Introduction

In order to be able to react to the different engagements on the projects, CPPM is equipped with differents equipments in various technical domains in electronics, computing and mechanics. Those equipments are operated by the technical services in the projects. Some of these technical tools are merged into platforms and technical plateaus:

  • LSPM : Provence Mediterranée Submarine Laboratory, submarine platform including connexion cables and junction boxes (including MEUST infrastructure). The KM3NeT/ORCA detector and a new instrumentation line to study marine environment (NUMerEnv) are connected.
  • HPHC : Scientific Calculation Plateform (High Performance Hybid Computing), including the LHC Computing Grid TIER-2 node and the M3AMU project to give access to hybrid computing equipments developed with CCIAM (Centre de calcul intensif d’Aix Marseille).
  • PICA : Infrared Plateau Characterization
  • PRAX : Radon and Xenon Plateau

The High-Performance Computing platform

The High-Performance Computing platform is a multimodal computing infrastructure for research on massive data. The EGI-INSPIRE project, financed by the European Commission, is the follow-up of the original EGEE projects which were completed in May 2010. The feasibility of a production level computing grid infrastructure was successfully demonstrated. The EGI infrastructure, based on national initiatives NGI France-Grille, provides European industry and research, access with this grid infrastructure, which is already extending over 260 sites in over 50 countries.

The project will focus on several primary goals:

  • To combine national, regional and dedicated grids in a single unique infrastructure to serve scientific research and to construct a solid computing grid for commercial research and industry;
  • To continually improve the software quality so as to provide a reliable service to users;
  • To attract new scientific and industrial users by allowing them to discover the great potential offered by the computing grid and to ensure that they receive a high quality of training and support;
  • Study future programming languages, in particular le GO language.

The grid makes use of the European Union’s high bandwidth network, GEANT, and exploits the vast expertise accumulated in the many national and international grid projects, past and present.

The CPPM computing departement is running a LCG Tier-2 grid node. The node aims to serve the analysis requirements or the laboratory’s physicists as well as those of other scientific researchers in Marseille, as well as contributing computing and storage elements to the grid. A new project is under study. It should offer a large computing infrastructure (about 2000 cores) and subsequent storage (about 1 PB) to different laboratories located on the Luminy Campus.

The High-Performance Computing infrastructure (mainly Grid computing until now - France-Grille and Tier 2 of LCG France), is developing a Cloud modality for the entire AMU scientific community. This will be possible thanks to an AMU project carried out in collaboration with the AMU HPC mesocentre through CPER and FEDER fundings. The project will set up a shared but distributed platform (Grid and Cloud in Luminy) and HPC (in Saint-Jérôme) accessed in a unified way for AMU users through the DIRAC software. CPPM made major contributions to the design and development of the this kind of systems, DIRAC project, for the LHCb Collaboration. This system now forms the basis for the activities of the Computing and Data team for the research of optimized algorithms for managing computing and storage resources for various scientific applications. In particular, the team focuses on so-called « Big Data » applications with the accent on management large data volumes distributed in multiple centers in the world.

Schematic of DIRAC
Schematic of DIRAC

The plateform develops innovative tools and services to integrate new types of resources, using cloud and supercomputer technologies, into large computing infrastructures like France-Grilles national grid or European Open Science Cloud (EOSC-Hub)

The CPPM Computing Platform project provides computing facilities to various research communities in France and in the world:

  • CPPM T2 site is part of the WLCG Grid infrastructure. It provides computing resources to the LHC experiments (ATLAS, LHCb) but also for other research communities
  • Cloud CPPM provides virtualized resources based on the Openstack service
  • M3AMU is a collaboration project with the University of Marseille to provide a single uniform access to the HPC Mesocentre as well as cloud and grid resources at CPPM

Ingénieurs et techniciens

  • La conception et le développement du système distribué de calcul et de gestion de donnée DIRAC qui est utilisé par de multiples communautés dans la domaine de la physique des hautes énergies, astrophysique, sciences de vie, etc.

  • La coordination de Consortium DIRAC qui réunit 7 universités et organismes de recherche dans le monde pour le développement et la promotion du logiciel et des services DIRAC

  • 2019: Cloud : Mise en pré-production d'un noeud de cloud M3AMU (400 coeurs, 200 TB)

  • 2020: Passage du réseau interne du noeud de Grille/Cloud à 100 Gbps

Plateaux

Infrared Plateau

The Euclid project was an opportunity for CPPM to acquire experience and strong skills in the design and realization of near infrared benches (working under secondary vacuum up to 70K) as well as expertise on hybrid IR pixel detectors of the H2RG type (persistence, gain, non-linearity, IPC).

The Infrared Platform allows the characterization of SWIR infrared detectors and benefits from a dedicated clean room (ISO7 - ISO5) equipped with two dedicated cryostats whose excellent quality has been demonstrated during the characterization of Euclid flight detectors.

CPPM's expertise in the field of infrared is now recognized internationally, thanks in particular to papers presented at conferences (SPIE, CNES), scientific publications, numerous Euclid Consortium-ESA-NASA meetings and contact with the LabEx FOCUS.

The CPPM is responsible for the characterization of the ALFA detector, a SWIR detector produced by the Lynred company, which will equip the infrared channel of the COLIBRI ground tracking telescope of the SVOM experiment. The laboratory also carries out the characterization of the low noise infrared quadrant photodiodes used for the validation of the LISA instrument by heterodyne interferometric measurement.

Radon Plateau

The objective of the Radon Plateau is to study the main problems associated with radon-induced background noise in low-energy neutrino physics and direct search for Dark Matter experiments, and to achieve a filtration quality of the order of microBq/m3.

With the advent of new projects that are more and more demanding in terms of background noise, we wish to deepen our knowledge of the phenomena of radon emanation, transport and capture, in particular environments (heavy gases, very low temperatures, etc.) with the extreme sensitivities required in future projects. The background noise induced by radon and its progeny is very often the most difficult component to eliminate and the ultimate limitation for a large number of experiments.

To address this issue, the interdisciplinary Radon platform hosts national and international experimental teams involved in various research projects for which radon is one of the main problems. An evolution is envisaged to regroup under the aegis of a national platform the expertise of the "low noise" type.

The Radon technical platform has the following equipment: germanium detector, adsorption measurement bench, diffusion chambers at ambient temperature, cryogenic system -85° C, RAD7 radon detector, etc.

Radon adsorption test bench that can operate from +20°C to -80°C. © Olivier Llido
Bench allowing measurements of low radon concentrations (as low as 50 mBq/m3). © Olivier Llido
Radonization chamber in controlled atmosphere. This chamber allows to expose small objects to a high concentration of radon. The nature of the gas, temperature, pressure and humidity are controlled. © Olivier Llido
Some samples of adsorbent materials that have been tested. © Olivier Llido
Anti-radon device designed and mounted at the CPPM. It allows to divide the radon concentration by at least one million! It is intended to be used on the SuperNemo experiment at the Modane Underground Laboratory. © Olivier Llido
Anti-radon device designed and mounted at the CPPM. It allows to divide the radon concentration by at least one million! It is intended to be used on the SuperNemo experiment at the Modane Underground Laboratory. © Olivier Llido
Sample holder of the adsorption test bench. © Olivier Llido
The germanium detector measures the spectrum of gamma photons emitted by the samples. It allows to precisely characterize their radioactivity. © Olivier Llido