Distributed Geant4 simulation in medical and space science applications using DIANE framework and the GRID

Distributed computing is one of the most important trends in IT which has recently gained significance for large-scale scientific applications. Distributed analysis environment (DIANE) is a R&D study, focusing on semiinteractive parallel and remote data analysis and simulation, which has been conducted at CERN. DIANE provides necessary software infrastructure for parallel scientific applications in the master-worker model. Advanced error recovery policies, automatic book-keeping of distributed jobs and on-line monitoring and control tools are provided. DIANE makes a transparent use of a number of different middleware implementations such as load balancing service (LSF, PBS, GRID Resource Broker, Condor) and security service (GSI, Kerberos, openssh). A number of distributed Geant 4 simulations have been deployed and tested, ranging from interactive radiotherapy treatment planning using dedicated clusters in hospitals, to globally-distributed simulations of astrophysics experiments using the European data grid middleware. This paper describes the general concepts behind the DIANE framework and results of the first tests with distributed Geant 4 simulations.