New grid site for SPD collaboration deployed at Samara University in cooperation with MLIT JINR The Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies in collaboration with Samara National Research University named after Academician S.P. Korolev (Samara University) launched a grid site for the distributed processing of physics data from the SPD experiment at the NICA accelerator complex at Samara University. According to MLIT Senior Researcher, SPD Deputy Computing and Software Coordinator Artem Petrosyan, Samara University has been a member of the SPD collaboration since 2021 and will now become an active participant in SPD experiment data processing and storage. Samara University had all the required engineering infrastructure for organizing a computing cluster. Based on this data, a group of specialists from MLIT JINR, which in addition to Artem Petrosyan included MLIT Senior Researcher, SPD Computing and Software Coordinator Danila Oleynik and SPD Deputy Computing and Software Coordinator Andrey Kiryanov who also represents Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute (PNPI) named after Academician B.P. Konstantinov (NRC Kurchatov Institute), compiled all documentation and, jointly with colleagues from Samara University, launched the process of implementing the computing cluster. Later, in 2024 and 2025, Samara University purchased the necessary computing equipment, which was connected and configured with the help of MLIT specialists. Chief Researcher, Head of the Department of General and Theoretical Physics Vladimir Saleev and Junior Researcher, Head of the Telecommunications Center Alexander Baskakov are taking part in these works on behalf of Samara University. At the moment, the Samara University grid site has already been fully commissioned and has become part of the SPD experiment data processing system, implemented by the Laboratory on top of the JINR Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex. “This example of successful cooperation between JINR and Samara University has clearly demonstrated that MLIT JINR has the expertise to elaborate a road map for building a computing cluster for any organization. This means that we can deploy a grid cluster virtually “from scratch” and implement it together with a scientific organization that has never been part of distributed computing systems before and has no experience in this area,” Artem Petrosyan highlighted. According to the scientist, this opens up broad prospects for applying this experience to the other participants of the SPD collaboration and, in the long term, scaling the experiment’s distributed computing system. "Cooperation between physicists from Samara University and JINR in the scientific and educational areas has been strengthening in recent years,” - Vladimir Saleev pointed out. - “Working within the SPD collaboration gives scientists from the Department of Physics the opportunity to participate on a long-term basis in a world-class project, to attract students and postgraduates to interesting scientific work in the field of theoretical physics and computer modeling, as well as in the field of modern information technologies. We associate the further development of cooperation between the University and JINR, in particular, with the possibility of opening a JINR Information Center at Samara University. This will allow the University to create a structure for integrating fundamental research in the region not only in high-energy and elementary particle physics, but also in other promising areas of quantum physics: quantum computing and quantum-mechanical design of new materials.” The Samara University grid site is a combination of 300 compute nodes. The grid cluster of another participant in the SPD collaboration, PNPI NRC KI, has the same volume. In December 2024, the first mass Monte Carlo modeling using the distributed data processing system was performed on the basis of the JINR MICC and PNPI, resulting in more than 200 million events. The storage of backup copies of the obtained data, occupying over 500 terabytes, was also organized on the JINR and PNPI distributed resources. . “Cooperation with PNPI in organizing the computing cluster gave MLIT a huge experience and excellent opportunities for selecting and elaborating infrastructure and software solutions. The developments created were not only transferred to organizations that collaborate with us, but became a solution for a number of MLIT computing tasks,” - Artem Petrosyan noted. MLIT specialists supported the deployment of the Samara University computing cluster at all stages and continue to collaborate with their Samara colleagues. Currently, Samara University is purchasing equipment to organize, together with MLIT, a so-called federated data storage that provides a single virtual storage volume for data coming from various sources in heterogeneous storage systems. In the future, MLIT specialists also plan to deploy a grid cluster for SPD at St. Petersburg State University. “Thanks to the launch of grid sites in three scientific organizations, namely, JINR, PNPI, and Samara University, the SPD experiment became the first in the NICA megascience project to implement a virtually fully functional prototype of a truly distributed system for experimental data processing and storage, which integrates geographically remote computing centers,” - MLIT Director Sergei Shmatov commented on the event. About the SPD experiment: . The SPD (Spin Physics Detector) experiment at the NICA collider is aimed at studying the spin characteristics of elementary particles. The experiment will resolve problems in investigating the structure of protons and deuterons, namely, the nature and structure of their own angular momentum (spin). Polarized proton and deuteron beams will collide in the collider. These studies will cover previously unexplored energy regions between those that can be provided by the ANKE facilities of the COSY accelerator (Germany) and the SATURNE accelerator (France), as well as the RHIC collider (USA) and the future polarized physics program at the LHC (CERN) and EIC (USA).
