CERN Accelerating science

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After many years of production use, the PIAF interactive service is about to be closed down. There are two main arguments for this.

1. The Meiko CS2 multiprocessor machine which currently hosts PIAF will be phased out in March 1999.
   Although the machine has been successfully providing the service over the past two years, its hardware (100 Mhz UltraSparc) is now obsolete, even compared to mainstream PCs.

2. Moreover the PIAF software would require a substantial upgrade to adapt it to the new Ethernet/Fast Ethernet mixed network environment. Since powerful central services, such as the new DXPLUS and HPPLUS, and cheap PC-based solutions are now available for interactive physics analysis using PAW, it was decided, after consultation with the main experiments using the service  (DELPHI and OPAL), not to port PIAF to another hardware platform.

All identified present users have already been contacted, either via DELPHI and OPAL or individually for the small number not in these experiments. Alternative arrangements for access to PAW are presently being set up and the CS2-PIAF system will be stopped at Christmas. Data will still, however, be available for retrieval after that date. In order to ease the migration of the data, users belonging to DELPHI and OPAL experiments can contact their responsible for computing, while other users should contact me by mail (Bernardino.Ferrero.Merlino@cern.ch).

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