Charge to the STAR Internal Software and Computing Review Committee

This review should be viewed as an opportunity for the Collaboration, as a whole, to gain an up-to-date and detailed view of all aspects of the STAR Software and Computing effort. This includes software infrastructure, track reconstruction software, simulations and analysis software, and the overall model for STAR computing at the RHIC Computing Facility, individual STAR institutions and the proposed STAR Computing Facility at NERSC. In addition, the requirements of STAR in terms of CPU power and storage for offline computing for simulations, reconstruction and analysis should be evaluated.

Based on an open review, the committee should evaluate the software and computing design to determine whether the physics driven requirements will be met by the design and its expected implementation. The committee should consider the likely progression of physics-driven requirements from day 1 to year 1 and beyond and verify that the plan for developing the software and computing will result in the appropriate capabilities as a function of time; for pre-data taking simualtions and testing of STAR, for turn-on, for one year later and for beyond when the full capabilities of RHIC and STAR are available. The evaluation should consider the physics requirements for both the nuclear physics program (heavy ion and related proton-ion and proton-proton studies) and the spin physics program and determine whether the software and computing fulfills STAR's requirements.