Minutes of the SB Meeting of February 2010

Session 1 - Thur 11 Feb 2010

1. Regular Issues

2. Conference and workshop participation

• Report from MC2010 abstract assessment and editorial team
• Future conferences and workshops
• Collecting and assessing proposed contributions to other meetings
  

Recommendations of Abstract Assessment and Editorial team (AEE team) approved. Agreed to signify approved submissions by adding the text
"On behalf of Geant4 collaboration" for the contribution on behalf of the full collaboration (abstract 10), and
"on behalf of the (specific) Geant4 Working Group(s)" for all other approved abstracts.
 SB members asked to make final check approved abstracts and give final feedback.

Agreed to keep process used for MC2010, unchanged, for SATIF meeting (deadline 28 Feb).

Form for submitting request will be circulated to the collaboration. The initiative for making conference submissions can originate from individuals, working groups or the steering board. All proposed contributions must be submitted for vetting by the Abstract Assessment and Editorial team and, in case issues are raised, the approval of the Steering Board should be sought.

Agreed on revised process for conferences with deadlines in March (Cospar, SATIF): after submission via the form, approval will be given by the AAE team, on behalf of the SB for those cases that the AAE team is able to reach a conclusion.

John agreed to maintain list of conferences - temporarily for the AAE team. Please inform John for additional conferences in which Geant4 can have interest, to update the form. Agreed to proceed to refresh membership of 3-member editorial team by March 30th, with mandate until end 2010.

3. Processes for Collaboration Matters

• Nominating Chair of Technical Forum
  • Propose to form Nominating committee for the post of Chair of the TF, and new post of deputy Chair TF.
    • Committee to consist of 2 nominees of SB, 2 nominees of OB.
  • Proposal agreed. Asked John to forward this proposed process to the OB.
• Process to address complaint(s) agreed.
  • Proposed process:
    • SB notes that under the collaboration agreement, only the SB can take action on complaints. The OB can only act at request of the SB.
    • A senior person will be asked by the SB to act as intermediary. He/she will request a writen, concise statement of the complaint, which he can then forward to the SB.
    • If there is a written complaint, the SB can act.
    • If there are issues requiring confidentiality or SB members, the SB can then ask the OB to convene a confidential inquiry into this matter, using two or more people external to Geant4. These people should be well respected, not involved in any institution involved in the complaint, but should have good experience of how large software collaborations operate (public/private aspects of use of code repositories, etc.). These people would then report back to the OB, keeping confidential whatever they feel needs to be kept confidential. OB reports back to the SB.
    • Beginning immediately, the SB asks all collaborators to accept this process and to refrain from any further actions or discussions of an existing complaint outside of this process.
  • Approved in principle at the meeting. [ Confirmed after 24 hour comment period. ]
• M.Kossov "CHIPS proposal"
  • Agreed SB response. The Steering Board:
    • does not accept proposal for change of directory structure;
    • does not accept that future changes be made available only in binary form;
    • reminds that code contributed to the Geant4 repository is covered by the Geant4 license;
    • note that copyright owners can provide existing or altered versions of their code under different license conditions (outside of the Geant4 distribution).
      
      

4. - Working Group (and Task) Proposed Work Items

Performance Task: 
John informed of the new leader for Performance Task: Daniel Elvira (Fermilab). SB agreed with the appointment.

Agreed that hotspots and similar code performance issues should be informed to the relevant WG for improvement.

• Geometry and Transport
  Note: Will add document of Code Review of Field to Geometry WG page. Identified issue of maintenance of tesellated solid.
  

AOB

Second part of SB Meeting - Thur 25 Feb 2010

Present:
CERN: John Ap, Gabriele, Gunter, Vladimir Iv., Dennis, Makoto,
US: Joseph, Paul
Japan: Katsuya, Koichi, Hisaya,
France: Michel
Italy: Pablo C.
Excuses: Takashi, Sebastien, Marc

3. Processes for Collaboration Matters (continued)

Census
- Results of census reported to Steering Board. Include corrections for new collaborators.

- Working Groups asked to elect the number of SB Representatives indicated. Results of Elections of Working Group Representatives requested by March 20th.
- Next SB meeting will be transitional, with existing SB members for the first short part, and the new membership during the second part.

Geant4 Workshop
- Workshop date Oct 4th-8th (at ESTEC) agreed.
- John to create poll to estimate attendance ( threshold of 40 for room - if >40 different room will be reseved)
- Program Committee for Workshop
   * Start organisation (find person to start organising)

4. Working Group (and Task) Proposed Work Items (cont.)

• Run/Event/Detector Response
• Persistency
• Tracking: goals include evaluation of track-level parallelism.
• Visualisation
• Testing and Quality Assurance
• Software Management: Request for update on progress in SVN evalution, including performance.
• Documentation Management
• Advanced Examples - Key area of work is on physics processes/model choice (physics list) - these is sensitive as these many users see the example's physics list as the collaboration's recommendation for a particular application area. Increased coordination with physics lists task force and physics WG coordinators is planned.

• Physics Lists
• Multi-core Task: report of good speedup reported for 16 and 24 threads.
• Performance: first meeting of Computing Performance Task (CPT), March 8th called by Daniel Elvira.

 Related topics: Advanced Examples: Clarified the mandate to create and maintain 'demonstration' applications, simplified versions of users' applications - for inclusion in distribution. ( Full, complex versions of such applications can be undertaken and released separately. ) Agreed to explore use of Twiki for clarify relationship between the examples provided and other applications in the same area (e.g. Gamos, ptssim, .. ).

Collaboration Milestones

Static Code Review Agreed to understand Static Code Review using the Coverity tool/service as Collaboration Activity and Milestone 2010. SB asks CERN team to undertake a first review of G4 code, and report results (as a QA activity).

Architecture Review Architecture team reported on discussions, organisation of topics, and issues identified for further study. Request for feedback on first report by March 8th. Dates for proposed mini-workshop are June 28th-July 2nd at LAPP. Request and poll for attendance will be circulate shortly. Architecture Team will meet during week of March 22nd, making arrangements for discussions on topics with coordinators of particular categories as needed.

AOB

• Clarification: Students - approved students - get status of full membership when contribution is undertaken (and vote in elections after one year.)
• New collaborators:
  • Advanced Examples: Ivan Petrovic A. Ristic- Fira (RBE models) and two "external contributor": C.Andenna and B.Caccia (medlinac + IORT example): Agreed
  • Norman Graf (SLAC): Announced at meeting - 2 weeks given for any questions.