France is anticipated to have, within the LISA Consortium, the responsibility of the Data Processing Center (DPC) and primary Data Computing Center (DCC).
As expressed in the LISA proposal to the ESA call, the task of the unique DPC is to receive the L1 data set ("calibrated" data) and to deliver to the Consortium and ESA L2 and L3 data (catalogue of observed sources and of their parameters, ...). Final long-term archiving will be done by ESA.
Together with CNES, the French component of the consortium has studied the feasibility of the DPC and has suggested a strategy that could be followed taking advantage of the emergent on-demand computing technologies. One of the features of this strategy is that the hardware component of the DPC will be able to capitalize on arbitrary and flexible participation of other national centers, at whatever levels is judged appropriate. This requires computing power and storage provided by the multiple Data Computing Centres (DCC). Another key aspect of the present work supported by the DPC and other laboratories is to develop the framework (software package) for LISA production data analysis and simulation. The support of the DPC to the simulation is required very soon, since the idea is to have the first version of a consortium simulator during the LISA Phase A.
As a follow-up to the LISA proposal for the mission, we feel that it is an appropriate time to have a meeting that would:
- Call together all the countries/laboratories that share an interest in participating to the activities related to the DPC (DCC, DPC software, ),
- Explain the present strategy and how the participating countries could contribute both on the software and hardware level.
- Discuss the organization of the DPC through the various national contribution.
