The IRI Light Sources Pathfinder is focused on identifying common components and interfaces that will improve the integration between Light Source and HPC facilities, using high performance networking. The light sources are the Advanced Light Source (ALS) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), the National Synchrotron Light Source 2 (NSLS-II) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The computing facilities are the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center, and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF). The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) connects the Labs and Facilities to each other, and provides the data circulatory system for the project.

Initial efforts are focused on running a set of light source workflows at multiple HPC facilities, and using the experience to identify appropriate APIs, common software and workflow components, operational and security models, and areas of friction that can be addressed. The intent is to invest the efforts of multiple facilities in an integrated approach to making remote HPC easily available to experiments at all DOE light sources.