The Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies at JINR and Academician Korolev Samara National Research University, Russia, have launched a grid site for distributed processing of physics data from the SPD Experiment at the NICA Accelerator Complex at Samara University.

The computing cluster of the SPD Experiment at NICA at Korolev Samara University

An MLIT senior researcher, Deputy Computing and Software Coordinator of the SPD Experiment Artem Petrosyan noted that Samara University has been a member of the SPD Collaboration since 2021, and will now become an active participant in the processing and storage of the experiment’s data./p>

Korolev Samara University had all the engineering infrastructure required for creating a computing cluster. Based on this data, a team of MLIT JINR specialists compiled all the necessary documentation and, together with Samara University colleagues, started building a computing cluster. In addition to Artem Petrosyan, the laboratory’s team included a MLIT senior researcher, Computing and Software Coordinator of the SPD Experiment Danila Oleinik and Deputy Computing and Software Coordinator of the SPD Experiment Andrey Kiryanov representing Konstantinov Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (Kurchatov Institute National Research Centre (NRC KI).

Later, in 2024 and 2025, Samara University purchased the necessary computing equipment, which was connected and configured with the help of MLIT employees. Samara University specialists taking part in the collaborative efforts are a chief researcher, Head of the Department of General and Theoretical Physics Vladimir Saleev and a junior researcher, Head of the Telecommunications Centre Alexander Baskakov. The Samara University’s grid site has already been fully put into operation and has become part of the SPD Experiment’s data processing system implemented by the Laboratory on the basis of JINR Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex.

“This example of successful cooperation between JINR and Korolev Samara University has clearly shown that JINR has enough expertise to develop a roadmap for creating a computing cluster for any organization. This means we can develop a grid cluster from scratch and build it together with a scientific organization that has never been part of a distributed computing system before and has no experience in this area,” Artem Petrosyan emphasised. According to the scientist, this opens up broad prospects for using this experience for joint work with other participants of the SPD Collaboration and, in the future, scaling the experiment’s distributed computing system.

“The cooperation between physicists from Korolev Samara University and JINR has been actively din science and education have been developing intensively in recent years,— Vladimir Saleev said. — Working as part of the SPD Collaboration at NICA provides an opportunity for scientists of the Faculty of Physics to participate in a world-class project for a long time, to involve students and postgraduates in interesting scientific work in theoretical physics, computer modelling, and modern information technologies. We associate the further development of cooperation between the university and JINR with the potential opening of a JINR Information Centre at Samara University. This will allow the university to create an infrastructure for integrating fundamental research conducted in the region not only in high energy and particle physics, but also in other promising areas of quantum physics: quantum computing and quantum mechanical design of new materials”.

The grid site at Samara University consists of 300 computing nodes, the same as the grid cluster of another member of the SPD Collaboration, Kurchatov Institute. In December 2024, the first mass Monte Carlo simulation using a distributed data processing system was conducted using MICC JINR and Kurchatov Institute facilities. The result was more than 200 million events. Over 500 terabytes of the backup copies of the obtained data were stored on the distributed resources of JINR and Kurchatov Institute as well.

“Cooperating with the NRC KI to build a computing cluster has provided MLIT with extensive experience and excellent opportunities for selecting and developing the necessary infrastructure and software solutions. The resulting innovations are now used by our partner organizations as well. In addition, these helped solve a number of computing tasks at MLIT at JINR,” Artem Petrosyan said.

MLIT specialists provided their help to the Samara University at all stages of building the computing cluster. They continue to cooperate with Samara colleagues. The university is purchasing equipment to create a so-called federated data warehouse, which provides a single virtual storage volume for data coming from different sources in heterogeneous storage systems, in cooperation with MLIT. In the future, MLIT specialists plan to build an SPN computing grid in Saint Petersburg State University.

“Thanks to the launch of grid sites in three scientific organizations – JINR, Kurchatov Institute, and Korolev Samara University – the SPD became the first experiment of the NICA Megascience project to implement an almost fully functional prototype of a truly distributed experimental data processing and storage system that unites geographically remote computing centres,” MLIT JINR Director Sergey Shmatov commented.

NICA Accelerator Complex