NOK 500 000 in NordForsk funding for Nordic software solution
The Advanced Resource Connector (ARC) is an Open Source software solution that facilitates researcher participation in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider experiments, among other applications.
eScience infrastructure enables researchers in all disciplines to use computing power to create simulations, process data, store large amounts of data, and more. The ARC serves as a middleware, linking together research e-Infrastructure in the Nordic countries by providing access to computational and data resources.
A Nordic collaborative effort, the ARC was originally created by NorduGrid in 2002. Today the ARC is the only Nordic software contribution to the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) and the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). The solution helps researchers, primarily physicists, to gain easier access to these infrastructures.
The ARC processes roughly 40 000 tasks each day. Thanks to its simplicity, stability and relatively low operating costs, the software is now in use in several countries around the world. It will, of course, continue to evolve along with advances in cloud services. NordForsk has chosen to contribute funding to the ARC’s further development, which will be administered by the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC). The ARC is backed by other funding sources as well.