ATLAS Distributed Computing: Experience and Evolution

The ATLAS experiment has just concluded its first running period which commenced in 2010. After two years of remarkable performance from the LHC and ATLAS, the experiment has accumulated more than 25 fb-1 of data. The total volume of beam and simulated data products exceeds 100 PB distributed across more than 150 computing centers around the world, managed by the experiment's distributed data management system. These sites have provided up to 150,000 computing cores to ATLAS's global production and analysis processing system, enabling a rich physics program including the discovery of the Higgs-like boson in 2012. The wealth of accumulated experience in global data-intensive computing at this massive scale, and the considerably more challenging requirements of LHC computing from 2014 when the LHC resumes operation, are driving a comprehensive design and development cycle to prepare a revised computing model together with data processing and management systems able to meet the demands of higher trigger rates, energies and event complexities. An essential requirement will be the efficient utilization of current and future processor technologies as well as a broad range of computing platforms, including supercomputing and cloud resources. We will report on experience gained thus far and our progress in preparing ATLAS computing for the future.